Day 1: Sepilok

We arrive in Sandakan and transfer through to Sepilok. The area hosts one of the finest canopy walkways in the world at the Rainforest Discovery Centre, a 347m-long (1140ft), 25m-high (85ft) steel structure. There are two well placed observation towers on this too, allowing great chances to find canopy birds at eye level, such as Black and Bushy-crested Hornbills, green-pigeons, Blue-crowned Hanging-Parrot, and raptors like Wallace’s Hawk-Eagle and Oriental Honey-Buzzard. There are also easy trails at ground level to explore too, and between birding the forest trails, spending time watching from the observation towers on the walkway and birding the secondary habitats just outside of the forest, a long list of wildlife awaits. A healthy list of woodpeckers occurs, with Asia’s largest, Great Slaty, as well as Orange-backed, Rufous, Gray-and-buff, Buff-necked, and Banded Woodpeckers. The flowering shrubs at the forest, when in bloom, attract spiderhunters and sunbirds, including Coppery-throated and Crimson Sunbirds, and Scarlet-backed Flowerpecker. Black-crowned Pitta, Rufous-collared and Rufous-backed Dwarf-Kingfishers, Rufous-winged Philentoma, are all found along the forest trails. On this night, we’ll undertake a night walk within the reserve to look for mammals like flying squirrels, civets, or if we are lucky a Philippine Loris or tarsier.

Day 2: Sepilok to Deramakot

This morning we have time for a little light walk and adventure before breakfast. Then we transfer the 4 hours to Deramakot Forest Reserve. This is a wild and incredibly exciting new wildlife watching zone, and it includes some of the best chances for encountering the wildest of Borneo’s wildlife. it has become particularly renowned for delivering super encounters with some of the best nocturnal wildlife in Asia. Of course, it goes without saying that many of these creatures are rare, but we will be spending most of our nights up late into the night in an attempt to give us the best chance of seeing these scarce and skulking rainforest denizens. Dermakot regularly produces Clouded Leopard, and the arboreal Marbled Cat. Neither are anywhere close to guaranteed, but there is nowhere else on Earth that produces these gems more regularly! But other scarce but potential mammals that get the juices going include: Sunda Pangolin, Otter Civet, Sun Bear and Banded Linsang. More regular species include Banded Palm-Civet, Island and Striped Palm-civets, Malay civet, Philippine Slow Loris, Bornean Colugo, Binturong, Red Giant Flying-Squirrel, Thomas’ Giant Flying-Squirrel, Hose’s Flying-Squirrel, and stunning herps such as Green Vine Snake, some pit-vipers, Wallace’s Flying-Frog, and many other amphibians. Night trips can also reveal Sunda and Large Frogmouths, Brown Wood Owl and other nightbirds.

Days 3-14: Deramakot Forest Reserve

We have 12 magical nights to explore this amazing place. Each day’s activities will differ, depending on what has happened the day/night before and how we are doing with the various enigmas we seek. The basic modus operandi is to eat dinner at around 7 pm, and then we begin our nocturnal forays at around 8 pm. We generally return to the lodge sometime between 2 am and 3 am, depending on the conditions and success we have with the wildlife. We then sleep till 10 or 11 am, do some local birding and activities around the lodge during the afternoon, where we can find Black-crowned Pitta, White-fronted Falconet and some small day-time mammals like treeshrews and squirrels. It promises to be a mammal-and-bird fest of epic proportions! We will spend every waking hour looking for beasts hairy, feathery, scaly and slimy. If we have good success with the nocturnal mammals, we can spend more time doing diurnal activities, and stake out fruiting trees looking for hornbills, Bornean Orangutans and Bornean Gibbon, all of which are common here, or go birding. There are a few trails here that we can explore for lowland forest birds, including Blue-headed and Bornean Banded Pitta, stunning Black-and-red, Black-and-yellow, and Banded Broadbills, Diard’s, Scarlet-rumped, and Red-naped Trogons, and the forest dwelling Banded Kingfisher. The garden of the lodge sometimes attracts Bearded Pigs and civets, and more regularly holds frugivorous birds like the endemic Yellow-rumped Flowerpecker. No matter what we do on any given day we can expect it to be phenomenal.

Day 15: Deramakot to Sandakan

After breakfast we return to Sandakan where the tour draws to a close.