24 September 2014

New Trip Reports: Scotland, Borneo, Way Kambas and Ethiopia

I’m still catching up with a backlog of trip reports, including a brief one of my own, but here are some more great reports.

Scotland & Northern England, 2014: Steve Morgan, 10 days & 13 species including Minke Whales and Water Voles.

Kinabatang River (Sabah), 2014: Steve Morgan, 4 days & 12 species including Flat-headed Cats, Malay Civet and Orang Utan.

Way Kambas & Indonesian Borneo, 2014: Ian Loyd, Lorna Watson and Steve Morgan, 2 weeks & 36 species including Feather-tailed Tree Shrew, Malayan Tapir, some nice bats and a probable Marbled Cat and Banded Linsang.

Ethiopia, 2014: Juan Luis Ortega Herranz, 2 weeks & 52 species including Bale Monkey, Caracal, Ethiopian Wolf, and Striped Hyena.

Jon

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12 Comments

  • 24 September 2014
    Richard Webb

    Great reports but one observation on the Borneo & Sumatra report. The record of a possible fishing cat in Way Kambas is interesting as contrary to what most of the books indicate fishing cat has never reliably been recorded on Sumatra. Duckworth et al recently published an article in Cat News in which the only two documented records of fishing cat on Sumatra were actually leopard cats once the photos were re-checked. All range maps showing fishing cat in Sumatra seem to be based on these records. Given that extensive camera trapping in Way Kambas and other Sumatran reserves has never turned up a fishing cat despite turning up numerous tigers, clouded leopards, golden, marbled, flat-headed and leopard cats Duckworth concluded that there is no evidence that fishing cat has ever occurred on Sumatra.That’s not to say it doesn’t but ……….. Richard

  • 25 September 2014
    PandaSmith

    I see my unidentified canid has popped up on yet another report! Wow – has there been any progress on its identification?

  • 25 September 2014
    PandaSmith

    I was very excited to see the Tapir pics on Steve’s report. And it appears that you spotted three? That is awesome. Now that you have caused me to start planning our Sumatra expedition, do you think you were extremely lucky in spotting the Tapir or is that just a great place to attempt a search? Nice job on many levels for this trip! I would be interested in hooking up with a local guide if you have some advice. Cheers

  • 25 September 2014
    Richard Webb

    Coke, Hari’s contact details are in my two Way Kambas reports on the site. He’s increasingly in demand with birders and ‘mammallers’ so early booking is advisable. You can contact him direct or through Satwa Ecolodge. Tapirs are erratic Hari sees them once or twice a year on average but other than Taman Negara it’s as good a site as any. However three in one trip is exceptional.

    Richard

  • 28 September 2014
    juantasugo

    Thank you Matthias. Very interesting.
    I read the work and it seems that our mysterious canid is Side Striped Jackal by the mitochondrial DNA, but continues to investigate the nuclear DNA, because they are very different from the side-striped JAckal in that same area.
    A paragraph of the work:

    “Published on blog by Mammal watiching.com blog “Very Strange Canid in Bale Mountains Ethiopia ” http://mammalwatching.wordpress.com/2012/09/11/very-strange-canid-in-bale-mountains-ethiopia-rfi/ the authors posted a photograph which has controversial phenotypic appearance.
    We get an opportunity to get pellet samples from individual with a similar physical appearance (Fig 3.) We found this animal to be striped jackal from the mitochondrial DNA and my collaborator is working on further work on the nuclear DNA. The phenotypic appearance of our striped jackal in Jima and Bale mountains his however very different from the individual presented in the photograph. All our samples of striped jackal are however grouped together with the striped jackal in Guinea and Benin reported by (Gaubert et al., 2012). It is however distant from the striped jackal in Kenya (Wayne et al., 1997).
    Cryptic canid do exist in Kenya or uncertainties in gene bank lead this variations needs to be investigated further.”

    A greeting

    • 28 September 2014
      PandaSmith

      I have not had a chance to read the entire paper yet but the image they put in the abstract is the exact canid we spotted and they are calling it the Cryptic African Wolf. Could the Side-striped Jackal mentioned above be another canid???

  • 30 September 2014
    Margarita Steinhardt

    Hello, following on Steve’s suggestions to check local tide
    tables for Kinabatangan river, I wonder if anyone could suggest where this info can be found.

    Thank you,
    Margarita

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