In northern part of Peninsular Malaysia, the road connecting West coast and East coast is famous for the sighting of elephant - Me myself had saw the largest mammals in Malaysian forest three time where all sightings occur at the East-West highway. Crossing two main range in north - The Bintang Hijau range and Titiwangsa range, this highway offer good spot for birding as well.
No large mammals were seen during this round of visit, a slow ride will offer good chance to see something, however, most of time - the roadkill. Like this female palm civet:
Freshly Hit - we move the body before we move hoping that no other vehicle hit the body, it got severe injuries on backbone.
The civet in full body view
This road connecting people of the east and west, but it can be a hell to wildlife live in the forest along the road, this palm civet one of example. I had seen the collection of photo from wildlife conservation that operating in Jeli (East end of the highway) show roadkill involving Tapir, Clouded leopard, leopard cat, wild boar, langurs and slow loris. They should create a wildlife crossing at several point in this road.
In terms of bird, some spot along this highway are good places to go for Hornbills and jungle dwelling raptors especially in Bukit Palong. My favourite spot located in the half way from Pulau Banding to Pergau Dam (still not disturbed by logging activities and has a nice small stream).
Wreathed Hornbill - a couple seen flying over
Chestnut-capped Forktail - usually seen foraging at the small stream
Grey-headed Canary Flycatcher - few couples seen foraging inside bamboo bush next to the stream
Other bird seen during this visit including Black-Crested Bulbul, Scimitar Babbler, Blue Whistling Thrush, Green Broadbill, Blue throated Barbet, Blyth's Hawk Eagle and Maroon woodpecker. With safety is the main priority in doing the assigned job, I only wish I had more time to spend on birding - time limitation as we need to conduct some site maintainance job as well.
The pathway to working site before and after
My partner testing the safety rope that we apply at some steep point at our working site.
Finally some shot of other wildlife we seen along our way:
Wasp humming their nest - This wasp has nasty sting - we don't want to get hurt so we left the plant it inhabit untouched, this wasp as well were not so offensive to us while we done the clearing job.
Reptiles which I suspect as immature skink
Channa sp., at the pond of near Kuala Rui
Well, It's gonna be long before I had the chance to re-visit this place in the future. However, the new job opportunity awaiting me is a promising one - working in an area where human and their civilization considered rare and will leave my hometown for a while
Cheers
