In search of the eerie laughing Hornbill and other forest creatures

The song of the Helmeted Hornbill has got to be one of the most bizarre sounds one can hear in Malaysia’s forests. It begins as a series of soft honks that accelerates into a rhythm, building momentum to climax in a far-carrying cackle that sounds like mad laughter.

Disbelief, making way to amazement, were my reactions when told the sound came from a bird. I had heard hornbill calls before, but nothing like this.

The first time I heard the hornbill with the peculiar laugh was when I was with a group of birders and bird photographers from Malaysia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the Philippines, traveling in two vehicles snaking our way up to the postcard-cute mountain resort of Fraser’s Hill in Malaysia’s Pahang state, about a hundred kilometers north of Kuala Lumpur.

We were in the country on the invitation of Ecotourism and Conservation Malaysia (ECOMY) and Tourism Malaysia to tag along while they check on the suitability of certain sites for birding tours, bird-photo safaris, and other ecotourism activities.

The jungles of Fraser's Hill

Fraser’s Hill got its name from Louis James Fraser, an enterprising Scot who started a tin-ore trading post there in the 1890s. When Fraser mysteriously disappeared in 1915, an expedition led by the Bishop of Singapore was dispatched in 1917 but failed to find him (or his body). But the bishop took in the cool, moist surroundings of the trading post and told authorities it would make a good hill retreat for government bigshots in the summer months. The government agreed and built a road to the hill station, houses, a golf course, and other amenities.

Fraser’s Hill sits at 700 to 1,500 meters above sea level and its pristine forest is renowned for its wildlife and rare plants. Around 50 kilometers of jungle trails are strewn across the hill station, and the air temperature stays at a pleasant 17 to 25 degrees Celsius all year. Its bird life is astounding, boasting more than 240 species, about one-third of which are montane specialists.

'He's spotted something'

I was in the second vehicle of our convoy on the narrow road to the center of Fraser’s Hill when the car stopped and Azhar Musyabri, Senior Assistant Director at the division of Tourism Malaysia focused on eco-tourism development, and one of our hosts, motioned for us to step out of the car.

“Andrew has spotted something,” Azhar said.

Andrew J. Sebastian, our tour leader, is ECOMY founder and CEO. Andrew is an articulate, unflappable, charismatic guy, an excellent bird guide, and described—with good cheer—by folks who know him well as “Clooney-esque.” Andrew stood there on the side of the road looking, well, as much as George Clooney could look if he were Malaysian and transfixed by something special enough to warrant stopping in a busy, narrow road. Azhar, fiddling with the controls of his camera, stood behind Andrew, his head moving up and down and sideways in the manner familiar to birders worldwide.

Other Tourism Malaysia staff and members of the media group, myself included, piled out of the car, our necks garlanded with cameras, binoculars, and other electronics. We stepped out into the gloriously fresh and crisp mountain air of Fraser’s Hill. The temperature was in the low 20s, a world away from the steaming cauldron of the capital in the middle of March. A road marker next to me reads “Bukit Fraser 7,” and on its other side, “Kuala Lumpur 97.”

A bizarre cry of laughter

“Shh, listen,” Andrew stage-whispered, as we hunched single-file behind him, and shadowing him closely like metallic particles in the wake of a big magnet. Andrew darted towards a tall hedge on the shoulder of the road and parted the leaves to peer behind them. The rest of us, minion-like, followed suit. Behind the hedge was a sheer drop, leading to a blanket of trees spread out below.

As Andrew peered, we also peered... but I had no idea yet at what.

The group fell silent and I took in the sounds around us. The passing cars chugging their way uphill; leaves and branches clacking and rustling in the breeze; various birds warbling their territorial anthems, or singing to attract potential mates.

Then I heard it. The bizarre laughter, somewhere in the tree-canopy below.

“Helmeted Hornbill,” Andrew said quietly, as George Clooney would, I imagine.

The action shifted to high gear, launching us into the elaborate dance choreography of birders searching the trees for a bird that sounds to be “just over there.”

Let’s pause for a moment to consider the Helmeted Hornbill’s size. My guide book tells me that it averages 1.27 meters in length, not counting the long tail which could measure up to half a meter. “Unmistakable,” the guide book states assuredly. One would think that a bird that’s more than a meter long and uttering a mad call would be easy to spot in broad daylight. But one would be wrong.

Andrew, followed by the rest of the group, charged uphill, pausing to cup his hands behind his ears and dramatically sweep the forest canopy with his eyes in the manner of avant-garde dancers. We got nothing. We flung ourselves downhill. Still we saw nothing but the mad laughter sounded closer, or maybe I imagined it. We crashed into a narrow trail, our heads bobbing up and down to look for gaps in the foliage. Nothing. We could hear the hornbill clearly but could not put eyes on it.

After several minutes of this, Andrew sprinted uphill once again, and peering through an opening on the roadside hedge, he spotted our quarry. Unfortunately, it was one of those deals where one has to stand on an exact spot and be an exact height to see the danged bird, which was about a kilometer away and still as a statue while perched on a tree in the forest below us.

Straight out of Dr. Seuss' imagination

We took turns standing on the magic spot to peer through the tiny gap, and this was what I saw: Helmeted Hornbill Rhinoplax vigil is a bird out of Dr. Seuss.

Seussian. Like something a young Tim Burton would put together. It has a long, whitish tail attached to a big dark torso that is connected to a red, wrinkly, leathery neck and a short yellow bill whose upper mandible is topped by a kind of slab, called a casque. All these disparate elements somehow combine to form a breathing, living being. It’s fantastical.

The British monarch Queen Elizabeth II, a sort of odd bird herself, once quipped that she needed to be seen in public to be believed. The same could be said for this bird!

The plight of Helmeted Hornbill, however, is no laughing matter, said Andrew. It was uplisted recently by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature to Critically Endangered, which is just one rung away from being declared extinct in the wild.

What has been killing them? The usual: degradation and loss of forest habitat. The unusual: the collection of its unique casque, which is marketed as “hornbill ivory.”

Unlike other hornbills’ casques which are spongy, the Helmeted Hornbill’s is said to be solid keratin. As the hornbill ages, the casque turns golden yellow with a bright red patina. Researchers say China is the biggest destination of Helmeted Hornbill casques, where they are carved into trinkets or used in traditional Chinese medicine. BirdLife International data show that the center of the illegal trade of these casques appears to be in Indonesia but could shift to Malaysia if the Indonesian population is wiped out or become too few.

Where the beautiful beasts are found

It would have been nice to linger and wait for better views, but Andrew said we needed to move on as we had many more spots to check. Over the course of several days, we birded around Fraser’s Hill and recorded some gorgeous birds, including beautiful residents such as Large Green Pigeon Treron capellei, Mountain Imperial Pigeon Ducula badia, Red-headed Trogon Harpactes erythrocephalus, Fire-tufted Barbet Psilopogon pyrolophus, Gold-whiskered Barbet Megalaima chrysopogon, Lesser Yellownape Picus chlorolophus, Silver-breasted Broadbill Serilophus lunatus, White-browed Shrike-babbler Pteruthius flaviscapis, Black-and-crimson Oriole Oriolus cruentus, Blue Nuthatch Sitta azurea, Sultan Tit Melanochlora sultanea, Chestnut-capped Laughingthrush Rhinocichla treacheri, Chestnut-crowned Laughingthrush Trochalopteron peninsulae, and Silver-eared Mesia Mesia argentauris. But we never got to see the hornbill with the peculiar laugh again.

On a trail called Waterfall Road in Fraser’s Hill, we saw what may have been paw prints of a big cat – Malayan Tiger Panthera tigris jacksoni, perhaps? The impressions were on fine sand next to a narrow channel of water off the main trail.

One can imagine the cat, breaking cover from the grass nearby, walking towards the channel, perhaps by moonlight, to slake its thirst. A few months before our visit, a daytripper had spotted a tiger in the spot, prompting authorities to restrict access in the area for several weeks.

The tiger, however, was never seen again, vanishing as mysteriously as it appeared. Like the Helmeted Hornbill, the Malayan Tiger, whose global population is estimated to be less than 250 adults, is critically endangered. As other members of our group scrutinized the paw prints on the sand, I looked at the tall grass and imagined a big wild cat there, one of the last of its kind, studying us, the dangerous upright apes that has caused it and other animals so much pain and suffering.

In September 2013, two other rare wild cats, the secretive Marbled Cat Pardofelis marmorata and Leopard Cat Prionailurus bengalensis, were photographed on two separate occasions by motion-triggered cameras set up in Pasoh Forest Reserve in Negeri Sembilan by Forest Research Institute Malaysia. The reserve is roughly 70 kilometers southeast of Kuala Lumpur and was our next destination.

Pasoh has 2,450 hectares of rainforest, 600 hectares of which are primary-growth. Over 300 bird species have been recorded here including Crestless Fireback Lophura erythrophthalma, White-fronted Scops Owl Otus sagittatus, Banded Pitta Pitta guajana, and the rarely seen Malaysian Honeyguide Indicator archipelagicus. The research station has a camping ground and a dorm with Wi-Fi for guests who want to stay for longer periods to explore the reserve’s forest trails.

The Marbled Cat was photographed in the afternoon, walking in what seems to be secondary-growth forest or forest-edge, its mouth agape. The photo of the Leopard Cat was snapped at night, walking among ferns, its coat black.

Tze Leong Yao, a botanist who works for FRIM said the Marbled Cat photo made news because it was the first time that the rare species was documented in the reserve where FRIM has been conducting faunal research since the 1960s.

What were the wild cats doing there? Are there more of them? So many questions.

Hidden creatures captured on camera

The institute’s camera traps have since captured images of Sumatran Serow Capricornis sumatraensis, Flat-headed Cat Prionailurus planiceps, and Malaysian Tapir Tapirus indicus, Yao said.

Looking at the photos from the camera traps, these elusive creatures seem tantalizingly close. They’re just right there, waiting for us to stumble onto them and say hello! But it is the opposite that’s true. These animals have either learned to be wary of humans and so have retreated to remote pockets of jungle, or humans have pushed them to the brink so that only those in hard-to-get-to places have survived, clinging on to life.

Aside from the camera traps, the institute with the help of the government of Japan, built a tree tower-canopy walkway system to help in the study of species found in tree canopies and higher such as migrating birds of prey.

The mystery of bird migration

Due to our short time spent at Pasoh, we didn’t get to see any migrating birds of prey, but a few days prior we have had our fill of raptors at Tanjung Tuan Forest Reserve and Wildlife Sanctuary in Melaka, about a hundred kilometers southwest of Kuala Lumpur.

Tanjung Tuan is a strategic point because it juts out into the Straits of Malacca, one of the most important shipping lanes in the world. It is where the strait is narrowest, with Pulau Rupat of Sumatra, Indonesia, just 38 kilometers away to the south. This is why the Portuguese, and later on the Dutch, maintained a lighthouse at Tanjung Tuan.

Since the strait is narrowest here, this is where raptors on their annual spring northward migration tend to fly through because raptors instinctively avoid having to fly over long stretches of water.

Between February to March of each year, thousands upon thousands of raptors, especially Black Baza Aviceda leuphotes, Oriental Honey-buzzard Pernis ptilorhynchus, Grey-faced Buzzard Butastur indicus, Chinese Sparrowhawk Accipiter soloensis, and Japanese Sparrowhawk Accipiter gularis, fly through here from Indonesia on their way to their breeding grounds in the north.

This year, as of the end of March, volunteers stationed at Tanjung Tuan have reported an estimated 46,000 raptors flying northwards. These birds are going on the arduous and dangerous journey back to their nesting habitats in China, Russia, and other countries in the north. Come autumn, they will fly south once again to their summer habitats in the tropics, and the pattern of movements continues.

The next place for ECOMY and Tourism Malaysia to check was Tanah Aina Farrah Soraya Resort in Pahang, which is unusual in that its chalets and dormitories were designed around existing trees, a river, and a fruit orchard.

Judging by the number of people around when we arrived, the place is a popular spot for tourists drawn by the resort’s family-friendly river-trekking and waterfall-diving activities.

Tanah Aina boasts that its structures occupy just 5% of a 150-acre forest fragment, and it does look like it: there are trees all around. The resort grounds were dotted with flowering durian trees, and the chalets and dorm rooms are free from chemicals—pandan and melur blossoms are used as room fresheners and dill planted in hedges serve to repel mosquitoes.

Orchards are not exactly known a hotspots of bird diversity but it was only at Tanah Aina that we got an excellent view of Blyth’s Hawk-eagle Nisaetus alboniger, a magnificent bird of prey with an unusually tall crest, and Black-and-yellow Broadbill Eurylaimus ochromalus, an adorable Southeast Asian beauty that one guide book author said looks like a bird wearing a little clown outfit.

Sadly, like many living beings that depend on forests for their survival, it is near-threatened with global extinction due to habitat loss.

The night of our stay, a resort staff mentioned to Andrew that he has seen a “big” owl perched on the big boulders along the river. This caused a bubble of excitement around the group because we had not had ticked off one owl from our checklist in this trip.

We came agonizingly close at Fraser’s Hill but the owls proved elusive to spot. Armed with torches, we checked the river, drawing quizzical looks from other guests, but found nothing. The area is prime habitat for owls, Andrew is convinced, but owling is never an easy task and nature doesn’t put on a show at one’s convenience.

Hornbill capital of the world—and then some

When our time at Tanah Aina ran out, we raced to our final destination: Royal Belum State Park in Perak near the Thai border, about 360 kilometers north of Kuala Lumpur. Royal Belum, together with Temengor and Grik Forest Reserves, form the Belum-Temengor Forest Complex, a huge tropical forest that is four times the size of Singapore. This vast—even impenetrable, at certain points—forest links with Thailand’s Hala Bala Wildlife Reserve in the north, forming a green corridor and sanctuary for wildlife, including the big boys: Asian Elephant Elephas maximus, Malayan Tiger, Malayan Tapir, and Sun Bear Helarctos malayanus.

Nothing quite encapsulates the essence of Southeast Asian wildlife than hornbills, and Belum-Temengor is the only place in the country where all ten of Malaysia’s hornbill species can be seen in the wild. When the fig-tree fruiting season commences in August to November, up to thousands of hornbills are observed to flock to the lowland forest of Royal Belum to gorge on the fruits. “This is the hornbill capital of the world,” Andrew said.

Bushy-crested Hornbill Anorrhinus galeritus, so-called because of long, drooping crest feathers; Oriental Pied Hornbill Anthracoceros albirostris, whose call is a “clattering laugh,” according to one guide book; Black Hornbill Anthracoceros malayanus, whose call is reported in the same guide book as “a disgusting retching sound”; Great Hornbill Buceros bicornis, which is the biggest and heaviest hornbill in the region; Rhinoceros Hornbill Buceros rhinoceros, the iconic Southeast Asian hornbill with an upcurved casque; Helmeted Hornbill, the one with the bizarre laugh; White-crowned Hornbill Berenicornis comatus, whose name comes from its shaggy white crest feathers; Wrinkled Hornbill Aceros corrugatus, which is much prettier than its name suggests; Plain-pouched Hornbill Rhyticeros subruficollis, which looks like it has a large egg yolk on its throat; and Wreathed Hornbill Rhyticeros undulatus, which is similar to Plain-pouched except that it has a blackish gash on its egg-yolk-throat.

“They can all be seen here,” said Andrew, sweeping his arms across the wide expanse of man-made Temenggor Lake, which serves as our entryway to Royal Belum. We had left our vehicles at Pulau Banding jetty where two speed boats waited to take us to a Royal Belum base camp at the mouth of Sungai Tiang, one of the tributaries to Temenggor Lake. The base camp and the speed boats are managed by Perak State Parks, and anyone wishing to enter Royal Belum must get a permit from the state agency. Tour operators and guides can arrange this for visitors, said Andrew.

Tracking down the elusive hornbills

The next two days, from dawn to dusk, we spent tracking down one-by-one the hornbills. By the end of our stay, despite the sweltering heat and dry spell, we had good views of Bushy-crested, Oriental Pied, Black, Rhinoceros, and Wreathed, and heard Great. I have never seen so many different kinds of hornbills in such a short period of time.

At nights we searched for owls and frogmouths, which Andrew is convinced, are around the camp having heard some calling in the wee hours. In all our destinations, Andrew had persistently looked for nocturnals but we had pretty much drawn a blank except for a Grey Nightjar Caprimulgus indicus perched on top of a lamppost one chilly night in Fraser’s Hill. We came close to a Collared Scops-owl Otus bakkamoena and a Mountain Scops-owl Otus spilocephalus on Fraser’s Hill but could not lay eyes on either one despite Andrew’s best efforts. 

The Sungai Tiang base camp has a jetty, chalets with showers and toilets, and common rooms. A generator set provides electricity at nighttime, but otherwise the place is the epitome of wildness with big-boled trees standing right up the water’s edge and branches reaching into the chalet verandas. Seen from a speedboat from afar at twilight, the base camp and its flickering lights look like a tiny and forlorn outpost at the edge of a gigantic, brooding, ancient jungle.

One morning we motored to another base camp at Sungai Papan where a huge tree was in fruit. As our pilot cut the engine and the boat drifted closer to the jetty in the still morning waters that reflected wispy clouds, the melancholy whooping call of White-handed Gibbon Hylobates lar erupted from the treetops around us.

There were no people at the camp when we arrived. The base of the large fruiting tree was blanketed by half-eaten or rotting berries that have fallen from above. The fallen berries’ pungent-sweet smell has attracted a swarm of flying insects, and I am sure shy forest dwellers such as pangolin, deer, porcupine, wild boar, and ground birds would also feast on this bounty in the safety of night.

A trail from the empty camp led to the jungle where Andrew pointed out an active salt lick near the bank of a creek. Near the salt lick, we saw shrubs with tops sheared flat, most likely the result of being munched on by a Barking Deer Muntiacus muntjak, and on the creek’s sandy bank were paw prints, maybe of a Leopard Cat.

As we made our way back to the jetty, a powerful roar tore through the trees across a narrow river. “It’s the big guy,” Andrew said quietly, meaning an elephant, and the roar its way of telling us not to come any closer. It sounded terrifyingly close, close enough for everyone to freeze in their tracks.

Like the riverbank at Fraser’s Hill where I searched the thick grass for signs of a tiger, I fixed my eyes on the thick, towering trees from where the roar came from, hoping to at least catch a glimpse of a pissed-off pachyderm. But there was nothing. It’s nice to know, though, that the big guys are in there somewhere, and thriving, I hoped.

On our final night at Royal Belum, an Asian palm civet Paradoxurus hermaphroditus showed briefly at dinnertime before retreating to the darkness just beyond the reach of the camp lights.

And then to our delight we got an excellent view of a big owl—a Buffy Fish-owl, Ketupa ketupu—perched close and open smack in the middle of the camp. Our record of spotting owls on this trip had been grim so finally notching one was a relief.

The owl, whose floppy ear flaps give it a kindly appearance, stared down at us with curious, brilliant yellow eyes that reflected the light of our torches. Maybe it was wondering what upright apes were doing in its territory, and as we fumbled with our cameras, it took wing noiselessly, perhaps curiosity satisfied, to be swallowed by the night. — TJD, GMA News

Amado Bajarias Jr. is a birder and writer. He has written several articles about Philippine and Southeast Asian birds, their habitats, and their conservation status for GMA News Online. He has written two books of poetry and is writing a guide to the birds of UP Diliman.