Rounding a bend in the trail I spotted something large, blue and pitta-like bouncing away from me. Boing! boing! boing! and it was gone. I knew immediately what it was even though I had never seen one before. Damn! Damn! Damn! I cursed. There was no question that that was a Giant Pitta but in the arcane world of bird watching this could only be described as an un-tickable sighting. I needed to get another look.
I tiptoed forward, pausing I scanned the forest floor and half imagined that I saw something blue. Bringing binoculars quickly to bear I realised he was still there, a male, partially obscured by branches and fuzzy in the late afternoon light. It was the sort of blue that one minute is most striking iridescence and the next has you rubbing your eyes as if it were an illusion. With each hop a different part of the bird was revealed; buff underside, heavy bill, black Mohawk stripe, black collar but never a clear view.
I had moved up the sighting scale to ‘tickable but unsatisfactory’.
To see a Giant Pitta is a holy grail for many birdwatchers. Like many rare terrestrial birds they are noted for their shyness. With the exception of some of the Bornean endemics it is one of the most highly prized sightings at Borneo Rainforest Lodge. My bragging rights were already ensured but I had an inkling that the experience was not over.
Something about the direction he was moving suggested that my pitta might come back into the open of the trail. As there had been no rain for two weeks I sat down on the dry leaf litter without fear of leeches. Although out of sight I knew he was still there so I waited.
What happened next popped right out of my fantasy. A female broke cover and hopped onto the middle of the trail. She was coloured a lustrous leaf litter brown, her movement both unhurried and fleeting. I was certain the male would follow her and two minutes later there he was, pausing just long enough to get my bins on him and then he too was gone. I sat cross legged shaking my head and not yet ready to write the ending.
The Sapa Bebandil river was very close, I could see a shingle bank from my seat. I remember Pete, my birding mentor saying that Pittas need to drink in the morning and again before they roost. With the forest so dry I reasoned they may be heading to the river, in which case it was likely that they would come back the same way. I waited. I don’t know how long.
The female was first to break cover again. She hopped boldly up onto a log where she perched for me. Her size and shape was almost like a small partridge, but more slender. Not keen on being in the open she flitted the rest of the way across the trail. Waiting for her beau to reappear, my heart fluttered when a dark shape stepped onto the trail. A bit big for a pitta, it turned out to be a male crested fireback pheasant, scratching insouciantly at the ground he strutted towards me.
In my mind I was starting to compose the ending – I wasn’t to see the male again, I must have missed him or the pheasant chased him off. Ye of little faith, for there he was, and closer too! A few bounces took him across the trail and into the undergrowth where he waited partially obscured as before. Then he did something un-pitta-like and flew up about 2m above the ground. I couldn’t see where he landed.
‘That’s it’ I thought, ‘it’s getting darker and I can’t expect to see any more’. I looked at the path to gauge how much daylight I had and was startled to see the female turning over leaves and pecking at the rotten wood of a tree stump. Each time her head went down I could see her blue bum go up.
She continued like this until I caught a flutter in my peripheral vision. I looked up just in time to see the male moving to a higher perch. Now I was thinking ‘surely not, he’s not going to roost right in front of me!’ I removed my glasses and waved them back and forth to remove the condensation. When I put them back on again I couldn’t see him any more.
Tags: Bird Watching, Borneo Rainforest Lodge, Giant Pitta, Malaysia, Sabah
Photos by Evangeline Majawat
A good crowd turned up at Kampung Kipouvo last weekend to help Arkitrek celebrate it’s official one year birthday. The event was organised by Kipouvo Community Homestay to feature a hazardous blend of sporting endeavour both on the pitch and around the rice wine vat. These are Kadazan people after all.
On arriving at the village we passed the village football pitch where I watched with curiosity a crowd of locals gathered around the touchlines. I wonder what’s going on I thought naively?
Mel from Camps International flags off the sack race. Camps International usually lease the homestay from the community for their Gap Year and Career Break itineraries. This party was a good chance for the community to diversify their business.
Competitors line up for the three legged race. Local school kids were roped in (pardon the pun) to make up the numbers much to everyone’s delight after initial shyness was overcome.
Ian and Capt. Ooi cross the line victoriously. Hot on their heels are Ooi’s wife Cindy and her local team mate.
BRL boss George has a go at the stilt walking.
Arkitrek Intern Sarah looks like she might have it nailed, but the photographer carefully cropped her stabiliser, Billy.
Cindy comes a cropper
Arkitrek intern Billy is going to work for Camp International next 
After the games we retired to the homestay to eat, drink and be merry.
Local school kids put on a show of Sumazau dancing. Arkitrek reciprocated with some ceilidh dancing but luckily the video has yet to surface on the internet.
4 Dundee architecture graduates in Sabah; Seamus, Billy, Sarah and Ian
After the Sumazau performance the amateurs were allowed to have a go.
Sarah and Seamus making a gallant effort on behalf of Arkitrek in the eating and drinking competition
Billy stuffs his face
The aftermath of the race to consume one leaf parcel of boiled rice, one hard boiled egg and a half litre of rice wine.
Tags: Arkitrek, Camps International, Dundee, Kadazan, Kipouvo, Malaysia, Party, Rice Wine, Sabah
Text and images by Sarah Greenlees
Starting as an epiphyte and often ending up as freestanding trees, strangler figs (genus ficus, subgenus urostigma) are dynamic and dramatic members of the forest structure, they can also be surprisingly architectural.
Degrees of Enclosure
Though all the forest provides shelter in some capacity, figs provide it in a very literal, enclosing fashion, at a series of scales. On the smallest scale, protective shells lined with spongy material and flowers provide shelter for tiny gall wasps. These fig syconia later develop into fruit. Here the female wasp will die after laying her larvae, but they also provide a safe place for larvae to develop, for wasp mating to take place and finally, for safe passage into the surrounding environment. They are a place of rest and a place of rebirth. At the large scale, the fig is an organic tower block providing shelter for pythons, frogs, geckos and birds. Almost in the manner of Ian Banks’ ‘The Bridge’ all sorts of animals live between the structure at different levels.
Compound Structures
This structure of the strangler figs is clearly legible – in architectural jargon it could be called celebrated. It occurs out of a sequence of growth. In common seed dispersal tradition, animals deposit seeds in their droppings in the branches of other trees. Making rapid development as an epiphyte, the fig grows and sends down aerial roots to the forest floor becoming a hemi-epiphyte (1).
Winding around the host tree and ascending back up to the heights of the canopy – a hemi-epiphyte becomes a parasite (2). The vines are strong, resilient and unassailable and their resultant patterns are a composition of elements in compression and tension. Primary roots of thick circular section become flying buttress when in filled with slender walls at the base. As these buttresses meet the centralized structure, thinner lines traverse the intermediary spaces, stretched between the primary elements in tension. Triangulated compound beams of soft wood are created that are always developing; continually being added to. In a dynamic and dramatic display over time the host tree is finally broken in several places, crushed, twisted and sometimes left hanging in a cathedral like arrangement of root columns.
Complex Symbiotics
The fig tree and the gall wasp survive by means of a unique symbiotic relationship. In return for the protective, flower lined shell; the female gall wasps are the sole pollinator for the figs. The relationship relies on a range of flowers of different lengths to match the anatomy of the wasp. As the wasp larvae develop within 3 – 20 days and the adults only live for a couple of days, so the symbiosis also relies on either the fig tree having syconia at different stages of development, or on there being a high population of figs of the same species in a given area. In an astounding display of biodiversity there are, in most cases, specific species of wasps for specific species of figs. This prevents cross-pollination and allows numerous fig species to grow together, sometimes up to 70 species in close proximity. The advantages of such ‘species packing’ in a forest where many of the animals may at some time be dependent on figs are clear. The system is a careful balance of chemical precision and statistical probability.
Of course, a similar relationship exists between man and his environment. Being surrounded by such a sensitive landscape as the Danum rainforest makes this all the more apparent. The revenue that Borneo Rainforest Lodge generates makes it imperative to the survival of the forest, and the forest is the reason for the lodge’s existence. How such a relationship develops is of keen interest. As the rainforest continues to create business for the lodge, how will the lodge further the conservation of the forest? Already their efforts to overhaul the typical practices of the hospitality industry, to green practices are admirable. And their continued search for new ways to promote conservation are very positive. But there is a long way to go and it requires passionate management.
Echoing the Past
At different instances in the design at BRL references are made to the organic weave of the fig vine within a clear and ordered structure. However, the visibly progressive structure of the fig tree is a reminder that the environment is a live, ever-changing one. Our buildings will fit in to the landscape and grow with it. Traces they leave behind have the potential to highlight the ever-changing landscape. Already there are signs of man’s intervention with nature – the boardwalk bends around the trees and when these fall their memory is marked by the path of the structure. A palimpsest of growth develops.
This reflects possibly the most poetic element of the fig tree development Once the fig is truly established as a freestanding tree and when the host tree has entirely disappeared the fig tree becomes a hollow tower with foot holes to climb.
It is an almost accessible starting point for a journey through the canopy. An ascent to the sky seems possible, if it weren’t for the fear of cobras, it is as tangible as the taste of wet soil in the air. The view from the top through the leaves and out across the canopy must be incredible. You can imagine the climb up being frequented by glimpses through the structure and then as you reach the top – the first clear view, like looking out over a parapet of a tower, straining to see before you’ve quite reached. And then to sit and look out. To be in a small, enclosed, protected space with an immense vista before you. Bacchelard’s attic pales into insignificance.
At the end of the fig tree’s story is a strong, tall structure of an ex epiphyte. But what is also left standing is the imprint of a tree, a hollow space that echoes of the past. A dark resting place of forest spirits, a hot and humid miasma, a shelter for geckos and bats, bees and pythons; a glimpse of the sky reaching high through a top heavy mass of tiny delicate pin prick leaves. It is the negative space of a trace of the past- the tree that was. Here is the tower to the memory of a tree.
Footnotes
(1) In a paper published by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization of Australia, Schmidt and Tracey hypothesized that this change in behavior is brought about by a change in nutrient levels.
(2)Though called strangler figs, it is often not the cause of death to the tree. Rather, it is often the rapid grown of leaves and roots as the host loses the competition for light and nutrients. In the process of strangulation, the xylem and phloem layers around the outside of the host trunk are closed off in the ever-increasing pressure of the fig growth.
References:
SCHMIDT Susanne ; TRACEY Dieter P. ; Adaptations of strangler figs to life in the rainforest canopy; Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, Collingwood, AUSTRALIE (2002) (Revue)
Website References:
Figweb; Iziko Museums of Cape Town accessed on 23 Jan 10
The Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation assessed on 23 Jan 10
Stranglers and Banyans accessed on 23 Jan 10
zipcodezoo accessed on 23 Jan 10
Mongabay
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Tags: Architecture, Borneo, Borneo Rainforest Lodge, Epiphyte, Fig Wasp, Malaysia, Sabah, Strangler Fig
The new bear house at the Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Centre Should have been completed this month however we have been delayed by bad weather.
Our site being low lying and barely above the water table has degenerated into bottomless gloop. luckily most of the building was up before the rainy season but materials deliveries and availability of dry working space has suffered. Under the conditions the contractor has done us proud and the quality of workmanship in the most important components, the cages, is excellent.
We’re now putting the final touches to an array of slide bars, pulleys, clamps, locks and counterweights that will make operation of the building safe for both bears and keepers.
One final hurdle remains after that, to connect the forest enclosure electric fencing to the building so that the bears’ release into a natural environment can be controlled. There has been much chin scratching on the part of all partners; Wildlife, Forestry and BSBCC on this one. Wildlife Dept are concerned about orang-utans getting into the bear enclosure and Forestry Dept are concerned about how they are going to prune trees to prevent arboreal bears from escaping the enclosure!
It was never going to be an easy task ensuring that captive bears have controlled access to primary rainforest however this is the feature that will set this sanctuary / conservation centre apart from any other.
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Tags: Bornean Sun Bear, Borneo, Malaysia, Sabah, sepilok, sun bear
Renovation of the main building at Borneo Rainforest Lodge is the biggest thing in Arkitrek’s short history. With the client spending two million ringgit on construction alone (not including fit out) the pressure has been and still is considerable.
Our relationship with both Borneo Rainforest Lodge and the contractor Mee San has been gradually building up to this over the last three years. It started with the renovation of 10 rooms in 2007, we added 6 more rooms in 2008 and a further 8 early last year.
Looking back on the process I see a progression both in our design repertoire, the client’s willingness to experiment and the contractors’ understanding that sometimes moy liang (less nice) is ho liang (very nice).
The highpoint of this process is undoubtedly the grandly named Twin Deluxe Riverview Chalet. The design concept proposed by the client of linking two existing chalets with a covered deck to form a suite has become our poster child.
Photo by Calvin Ng
Having said that, writing this as I am now, in one of the very first chalets to be renovated I still profess a great fondness for their small-but-perfectly-formed-ness. And of course because they’re closer to the bar.
During my last site visit before the Christmas holiday the main lodge building still resembled a demolition site . Now it resembles a construction site and walking around this evening I felt a little surge of ‘wow, we might actually pull this off’.
The kitchen and bar equipment is installed and the ergonomics feel right (see below for a panorama viewpoint from the bar). The partially closed atrium looks better proportioned and awaits the feature lights that our specialist designer has come up with. The reception area integrates
The atrium is also integrated with the new reception area and standing in the heart of the building I’m beginning to see how the flow between inside and out and between back of house and front is coming together. This difficult to describe, movement of energy, was one of the most conspicuous shortcomings of the original design.
Fixing this and tarting up the finishes are the main objectives of the renovation. In practice this means opening up the perimeter to allow light in and views out plus sorting out the arrival sequence and grouping complimentary functions together.
There are three more weeks before the lodge reopens and a lot of hard work to be done before then.
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Tags: Borneo, Borneo Rainforest Lodge, Danum Valley, Malaysia, Renovation, Sabah
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