Dear members and friends,
We are inviting you for talk about the Birds of Borneo.This talk celebrates Borneo’s wonderful bird life. Seen through a telephoto lens, the beauty of many of Borneo’s birds is simply amazing.
Speaker: Hans Hazebroek
Date: Saturday 9 March 2019
Time: 7.30pm -9.30 pm Please be on time.
Venue: Islamic Information Centre (Lower Baruk)
Jalan Ong Tiang Swee (behind Swinburne University)
- Please register by sending email to mnskuching@gmail.com latest by Wednesday 6 March.
Birds of Borneo
This talk celebrates Borneo’s wonderful bird life. Seen through a telephoto lens, the beauty of many of Borneo’s birds is simply amazing.
Northeast Borneo’s highlands and mountains have been in existence for at least 7 million years. This has helped rainforest persist longer on Borneo than in Sumatra and Java. Thus, Borneo (especially northeast Borneo) has been a refuge, preserving rainforest bird diversity, even when much of the rest of SE Asia suffered rainforest extinction during the colder, drier climates of the Pliocene (5–2.6 million years ago), and Pleistocene (2.6–0.01 million years ago). When climates became warmer and wetter, rainforest was restored in areas that had been too dry, and northeast Borneo became a source from which birds could re-colonise the restored forest. This helps explain why, for example, in north Borneo the White-crowned Shama differs from the White-rumped Shama in the rest of Borneo; the Black-crowned Pitta differs from the widespread Garnet Pitta; and the White-fronted Falconet differs from the widespread Black-thighed Falconet. It also explains why Borneo has more endemic species (which are only found in Borneo and nowhere else) than Sumatra and Java. And why most of these endemics live in the mountains: lowland species are replaced in mountains at higher elevation by very similar species. For instance, the lowland White-crowned Forktail is replaced by the Bornean Forktail at higher elevations. Moreover, this points to the reason for Borneo to have more species of hornbills, trogons, barbets, broadbills, pittas, flowerpeckers, spiderhunters and frogmouths than any other forest in the world.
Hornbills are ‘indicator’ species of the health of Borneo’s forests. If a forest is healthy there are sufficient fruit trees for hornbills to feed on and sufficient old trees with cavities for them to build a nest. There are 8 species of hornbills in Borneo. Six of these spend their life in tall mixed dipterocarp forests, covering huge distances in search of fruit trees and often defecate (poop) seeds in flight, thus dispersing seeds throughout the forest. Many rainforest trees cannot propagate without hornbills and Borneo’s forests need hornbills to remain healthy.
About the speaker:
Drs Hans P. Hazebroek — Geologist, Nature Photographer and Writer
Books and book chapters written and photographed:
in Sarawak –
- National Parks of Sarawak (2000) (with co-author Abang Kashim bin Abang Morshidi)
- A Guide to Gunung Mulu National Park (2002) (with co-author Abang Kashim bin Abang Morshidi)
- A Guide to Bako National Park (2006) (with co-author Abang Kashim bin Abang Morshidi)
- Geology and Geomorphology: chapter in Tanjung Datu National Park— Where Borneo Begins (2015)
- Geology and Geomorphology: chapter in Gunung Penrissen — The Roof of Western Borneo (2017)
- Geology andGeomorphology: chapter in Gunung Santubong — Where Nature meets Culture (in press)
in Sabah –
- Maliau Basin – Sabah’s Lost World (2004) (with co-authors Tengku Zainal Adlin and Dr. Waidi Sinun)
- Danum Valley — The Rain Forest (2012) (with co-authors Tengku Zainal Adlin and Dr. Waidi Sinun)
- Tertiary tectonic evolution of the NW Sabah Continental margin (1993) (with co-author Dennis N. K. Tan)
Principal photographer for:
On the Forests of Tropical Asia – Lest the memory fade (2014) by Peter S. Ashton
Contributing photographer for:
Phillipps Field Guide to Mammals of Borneo (2018) by Quentin Phillipps and Karen Phillipps
Orchids of Sarawak (2001) by Beaman, T.E., Wood, J.J., Beaman, R.S., Beaman, J.H.
Regards,
Cynthia Lobato
MNSKB Secretariat--
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