Mangroves, birds, flying squirrles and flying lemurs!
Posted December 24th, 2007 by brian
OK, so we didn’t just lie on the beach the whole time at Langkawi! We spent a day with Irshad Mobarak and his excellent nature tour company, Junglewalla. When Yuchun and I travel, we enjoy mixing in wildlife and nature exploration along with culture, history, and beaches. Langkawi offers impressive biodiversity for nature lovers since the island has beaches, mangroves, rainforests, and tall limestone hills. It’s also home to over 200 species of birds, many of which are quite colorful.
We were fortunate to have Irshad as our guide. His passion as a conservationist really came out as he generously shared his extensive knowledge about the environment, the mangroves, birds, animals, and plants of Langkawi. He was entertaining as well, e.g. when he went into how the sea eagles find their mate for life!
The birds and animals fascinated us. It was certainly exciting to see over 20 Great Hornbills in one part of the island – these were large birds, standing about four feet tall with a 60-inch wingspan. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a camera with a nice zoom, so here’s a rather inadequate picture (above) of this magnificent bird. For some nice shots of the birds we saw, check out this page on JungleWalla’s website.
In the evening, we were guided to an area which allowed us to see two fascinating nocturnal animals—the flying squirrel and flying lemur. Actually, they don’t fly, but rather glide from tree to tree over great distances (we heard that the flying lemur does the best job and can glide100 meters!) The flying lemur is also known as the colugo and is quite unique to this area. Very little is known about them, so we were glad to see a few of them, in gliding action, that evening!
Reddit
Digg
Delicious
Post new comment