Thank you Guests of 2018

2018 whizzed past very quickly and some of the events with wildlife sightings did stay for a moment.  

 

Thank you to my 2018 guests for being part of our wildlife and nature moment. The excitement, fun and adventure wouldn't be possible without you. 

My special guest appearance is Rufous 🐶  My walkabouts with him had some good birds that came along and of course, he wouldn't know. 

Wishing everyone a fruitful new year 2019 with more lifers and wildlife. 

My Mudflat Story: A Giant Cockle and A Wedding Ring

Once upon a time, years ago, a lovely couple came and took me out on a kayaking excursion in the mangrove. To respect  this couple's privacy, I now name them as Mr & Mrs Romanian.

This post is dedicated to this lovely couple because without them I would not be out there kayaking and would not had such experience in the swamp that turned the impossible to the possible. 

Here's the story:

A journey by boat to our kayak put-in point was a bit bumpy with some swells. During our journey, we were rewarded with the incredible landscape of 490-370  million years old karstic limestone of Setul formation that formed the Eastern rim of Langkawi. 

Langkawi's uniqueness: The Karst and Mangroves

While I was occupied with spotting for Brahminy Kite Haliastur indus and the White Bellied Sea Eagle Haliaeetus leucogaster, Mr Romanian was occupied with his camera clicking away.

Loads of trash welcomed us on a secluded beach as we prepared ourselves for the kayaking through a cave tunnel to get to a salt water lake. The tide was reasonably high enough for us to play around in between the Rhizophora trees with our kayaks. We saw a couple of mudskippers,  tree climbing crabs and lots of mullets. 

We headed out to the sea after that and kayaked along the coastline into the higher density of the mangroves. After some time exploring in there, we met up with our boatman at the edge of the swamp.

I instructed the couple to pull their kayak alongside with the boat so that they could stand up and climb over. My kayak was next to them to help stabilizing their kayak while Mrs Romanian climbed over onto the boat. Seconds after Mrs Romanian was on the boat, I saw something small and shiny passed me, knocked on the starboard side of my kayak and bounced off  ...pluurrrp.. into the water. It was too fast for me to catch it.

My first thought was, "A loose screw!".  I first looked around my kayak. Nope. My kayak ain't got screws. I looked around the boat and then at Mr Romanian. He was frantically searching for something. "Looking for something?" I asked. He replied, "My wedding ring..."

"Uh..oh" I said to myself. He asked me to check around my kayak. I dare not tell him that something went into the water and so I pretended to search around my kayak. Alas, I told him that I saw the ring went into the water and it was hard for him to believe my statement. He stared at me for awhile.

He had his large swimming goggles with him and went into the mangroves water to search for the ring. The water visibility was near zero and it was impossible for him to look for anything. The boatman and I told him to be careful on placing his footsteps because we didn't want him to step on the ring pushing it deeper into the mud. 

I was sitting on my kayak looking at him searching for his wedding ring and thinking to myself, "This is impossible". And then I decided to do the impossible by joining him into the swampy water. It was only waist deep and I could stretched my hands to the mud feeling for anything. I was worried by doing that could worsen the search. 

Mr Romanian was searching the area where I pointed the ring has dropped. I suggested that the current may had pushed the ring further away. But he was very convinced that the ring cannot be pushed much because it is heavy. I later learnt that the ring was made of platinum but I have no idea how heavy a platinum ring is.

After fifteen minutes in the water, Mr Romanian decided to call off the search and surrendered to the impossible. We climbed up to the boat and headed out to the sea. 

I watched how Mr Romanian who was smiling from ear to ear at the beginning of the excursion and now it was from jaw to jaw. While his wife was consoling him, the boatman and I were silently sympathising the couple.

Suddenly, the invisible light bulb above my head lit up! 

I knew the tide was going out that time and that area will be dry in the next three to four hours. I rechecked the tide table on the time of the lowest tide and quickly discussed with my boatman. So a plan was developed. I presented our plan to the couple and without hesitation, Mr Romanian liked it and he seemed very determined. There is still hope. Yes!

The lowest tide on that evening was a quarter to five. We set out at three in the afternoon and it was just three of us without Mrs Romanian. This time the sea got rougher and our ride was bumpier. 

As we got there, the boat could not go right into the spot where the ring has dropped because the tide had gone down a lot. With our double kayak, Mr Romanian and myself paddled on below knee deep water into the shallowest  stream-like channel. I told myself not to have any expectation and just enjoy the moment in the mud.

It was amazing to watch the mudflat. Blue-spotted mudskippers were everywhere! The crabs scattered away as we were approaching the spot. "Uh...urgh ... hmmm" as our feet sank into the soft soggy mud. Mr Romanian is a huge 6 footer and he sank in at thigh-deep mud. I am a much shorter Asian person and so, I sank into the mud up till my waist. We scanned the area very slowly by sweeping the top layer feeling for any hard metal object before taking another step. I had to crawl out of the mud in order to take another step. As I was doing so, I was apologising to the numbers of small tiny shrimps, crustaceans and other zooplankton that we stepped and crawled on. I felt ssooooo guilty.

During the search, it was also an opportunity for me to discover the mangrove fauna. Besides the shrimps, fiddler crabs and mudskippers, there were blood cockles too! The blood cockles here were almost the size of my palm!

Blood cockle or what we call them as "Kerang" in Malay is an edible marine bivalve mollusc. There are many ways to cook them. The simplest way is a quick cook in the hot water and can be eaten on its own or stir fry them with noodles. The small sized Kerang is a must ingredient for our delicious Malaysian hawker dish known as "Char Koay Teow" (Fried Flat Noodles)

Penang Char Koay Teow... Yum!

My boatman joined us into the mangroves by leaving his boat outside. But he was sitting on the Rhizophora tree roots watching us because he was wearing a white T-shirt.  He was giving us tips and suggestions on what else we can do as if he is our supervisor.

Sand flies were everywhere biting us and we were scratching crazily on our arms and thighs. Those huge biting flies were around too and had started to annoy Mr Romanian. He was wearing only his swimming trunk and I had my long sleeved rash guard and shorts. Almost forty five minutes later and no sign of his wedding ring except for those huge gigantic blood cockles. Those irritating flies were too much for Mr Romanian that he decided to call off the operation.  But I felt it was quite a waste to give up now when we had came all the way in and the tide was still low. Luckily, my boatman supported my thoughts and he encouraged us to keep looking. 

Photograph time while we took a five minute break. While Mr Romanian was resting, I crawled a few meters searching at the tiny mud drain where the water was running out. And suddenly, something shiny and white was staring at me. It was just sitting next to the mud drain. I went over to touch it and it was hard. Metal! I picked it up and asked Mr Romanian if this metal belongs to him. He took it from me to check and then he said calmly, "All of us should go out for dinner to celebrate". Found it!!! The ring drifted at least five meters away from where it dived into the water. 

I was leaping in joy and of course I couldn't leap up because my legs were stuck in the mud. My boatman was clapping and I was shouting in joy. I don't know but it seemed that I was more in the ecstasy of  joy than Mr Romanian. Maybe he has yet to recover from his shock.


As we paddled our kayak out to the sea with our hands on very shallow water, I was still feeling guilty about those sacrificed shrimps and small juvenile crabs. Oh well, there will be thousands to millions more of those but only one platinum wedding ring... just a thought to console myself.

Mr Romanian was back to smiling from ear to ear and our mission accomplished. Am I starting to believe that miracles do exist? Now back to my blood cockle... hee..hee... my precious.

Ever since this incident, I have to remind myself to remind my guests to temporarily remove their wedding rings before kayaking. It is very rare to be as lucky as Mr Romanian.

More than eight years have passed and this experience will remain as my best moment being a nature guide. I am still alive to tell this story and now I am sharing this with you. It is a long post, I know and thank you for reading this.

Aaarrrrgggghhhh!

Have you ever experienced this? Just when you decided not to take your camera out for the day, something elusive like this one here appeared right in front of your eyes.

This poor quality picture of a male Banded Kingfisher was taken in October 2010 with my Canon Powershot camera, not today..

My aim for this morning was to focus on my walk up the 4,287 steps on Gunung Raya and in wanting to reach the top on time, I decided not to take my camera along. And at the same time I was hoping that nothing special would come along...but that didn't help... Aaarrrrgggghhhh......

On my first 5-minute of the walk, the first birdie greeted me in the morning with a sweet whistling call of a female Tickell's Blue Flycatcher Cyornis tickelliae. This small flycatcher does not usually perch for long but she did, for 5 minutes. I could have.... Aaarrrrgggghhhh!

"Whoooppp...whoooppp... whooooppp..." the loud helicopter-like sound made by the flapping wings of hornbills. A flock of Wreathed Hornbill Aceros undulatus!! Both males and females! It was alright that I didn't have my camera. They were flying above the trees canopy and I saw them though the gaps with my binoculars. One of them perched on a leafless branch for a short while. Then I heard a call of a Crested Serpent Eagle Spilornis cheela and saw a quick glance of that raptor. It seemed to be annoying those hornbills.

While ascending up that steep stairs, I heard the call of another elusive bird, Orange Breasted Trogon Harpactes oreskios. I imitated its call... but it flew further away...

Not along after, a whitish butterfly with some yellow patches near its abdomen was fluttering in front of me. I was watching it till it landed on a vine. Then it started to open its wings slowly, then closing it slowly, opened again very slowly and repeated the actions many times for five minutes. As if it was saying this to me, "See my beautiful wings... and you don't have your camera with you... neh, neh, neh, neh, neh..." Aaarrrrgggghhhh!

After a good 2-hour workout, Phew!!! up on the top of the hill. I thought I heard a Great Hornbill Buceros bicornis nearby. And I was right, I startled that hornbill with my presence and it flew above me showing its bright yellow bars under its wings. 

It was hot and sunny when I got up there. After I had a quick snack, the mist came in quickly. It cooled the area down and I was reluctant to descend. Such a nice temperature on a hot dry season in Langkawi now. I sat on a rock and savoured a 20 minute power nap amidst the cool mist. Not far away on the trees behind me was a group of Long Tailed Macaques Macaca fascicularis feeding.

Time was up and I had to descend. After twenty minutes on those steps again, shower came!! Yeeehoooo!! It was strange to have rain in this time of the year. 

About midway down, there was a bit of disturbance at the canopy layer and a bird shrieked. I caught a glimpse of it and followed it. Then it perched. It has a longish tail and I quickly took out my binoculars from my day pack. OMG!! Orange Breasted Trogon Harpactes oreskios. Yeah! Got it finally! It perched for less than 5 minutes and I could have ... Aaarrrrgggghhhh! And then it flew away.

"Thonk, thonk..." The call of a Dusky Leaf Monkey Trachypithecus obscurus above the last 550 steps of the stairs. I looked up attempting to spot them. Suddenly a bird flew in front of me and perched on a liana about five meters away. Through my naked eyes, I saw a longish bill and I didn't want to believe what I saw. Again, I quickly took out my binoculars to confirm my curiosity, yes indeed that this bird was a male Banded Kingfisher Lacedo pulchella ! This kingfisher is  elusive and it is uncommon bird to sight. This male kingfisher looked up at the monkeys crossing from tree to tree and he didn't seem to be bothered at all. I was drooling over him through my binoculars and at some point, I caught him closing his eyes and he dozed off. He was there for fifteen minutes. And then I thought, "A good fifteen minutes and just five meters away, I could have...." Aaarrrrgggghhhh! 

And so, this was one of those days when you asked, "Where is my camera when I needed it?" Aaarrrrgggghhhh!

About 100 steps to the recreational park, two Greater Racket-Tailed Drongos Dicrurus paradiseus came along to say, "Bye bye" by swaying their elongated tails.

Oh well, I must admit that I had a fantastic day out there and the elusive creatures that revealed themselves were the greatest treat for the day. I was also smiling from ear to ear along with my Aaarrrrgggghhhh!

Anyone here have similar  Aaarrrrgggghhhh!  experience? 

Note: This is one of my old stories back in 2011, I like to share again :)