Listening Earth Blog

The monsoon has finally caught up with us. Not in a torrential downpour kind of way – just steady soaking rainstorms that last an hour or so each day. But it is enough to bring the leeches out in platoons on the forest tracks, and create landslides like this one on the path to our bungalow.

We are at Fraser Hill, in the Malaysian highlands, one of the birding hotspots of the Malay peninsular. The bungalow we’ve found for the week is rather rustic, a 1920s building with 21st century bathroom (thankfully not the other way around).

Bukit Fraser, as it is locally known, was originally a British hill station. The road up here, built in the early 1900s, is an extraordinary feat of construction, and shows how much the colonials were prepared to invest in their cooler climate retreats. Now it is a tourist village, busy with weekend visitors from Kuala Lumpur, a somewhat odd place in the tropics with its topiary hedges and quaint bungalows. There is even a small strawberry farm!

After the disappointments of humid lowland forests, we’ve come here in the hope of recording some of the highland birds that Fraser Hill is renowned for.

The first exotic species we encountered was a Fire-tufted Barbet feeding outside our bungalow. Unlike any other Barbet, it has a sprig of red feathers erupting from its forehead. It also has a very unbarbet-like call. Most barbets have a repetitive piping call, “potock, potock, potock…” or “pop, pop, pop…” that can go on for half an hour. Hence barbets are ubiqitous in Asian forests as they can call all day. The Fire-tufted however gives an upslured buzzing, more like an insect than a bird, and it only calls infrequently. We ended up calling them Bizarre-bets.

Next we came across a small flock of Silver-eared Mesias. We’d seen these colourful birds at Mae Wong near the Burmese border, and thought them a rare and exotic species. Here they are as common and confiding as sparrows, sitting on the backs of chairs at the strawberry farm restaurant, scolding each other as they dart for scraps from under our table. It turns out they are much more shy in the forest, presenting me the choice of an easy photograph of them sitting on a fence, or spending hours stalking them for a more natural shot.

Many birders come to Fraser Hill to happily tick their bird lists, and its easy to see why they would enjoy themselves here. Chestnut-capped Laughing Thrushes and Long-tailed Sibias are common, we have a Spiderhunter raiding the fresias in our garden, and exotic species turn up in feeding flocks throughout the day.

But recording this unique soundscape has proved somewhat of a challenge. Fraser Hill is quite small, and there are roads leading every which way over the hills, mostly to privately owned homes and bungalows. One could describe it as a hilltop suburb. Hence there is a constant hum of cars and motorcycles, plus periodic broadcasts from the town’s mosque. I am having a problem with extraneous noise.

Another problem is one that has puzzled me in other places; that there seem to be few birds in the dense, mature forest, instead they hang around the areas of forest, parks and gardens around the village. Hence my first attempts to find a quiet location, which had me exploring the more remote forest tracks, have not been rewarding. The dawn chorus has been sparse, and insects have been predominant even before sunrise. Add to this occasional rainshowers, some wind, leeches and very muddy tracks, and as you can imagine, its not long before I am considering more creative approaches.

After several days, I find a quiet road that goes around the back of a hill, blocking out the sound of the town. Here I am overlooking a densely forested valley, surrounded by the mosiac of hilltop forest and gardens that attracts the greater density and diversity of birdlife. Apart from a nuisance dog barking occasionally, and an obliviously friendly early morning jogger, this site gives me the recording I’m searching for. It also gives me my first leech bite of the week. And even the Bizarre-bets make an appearance.

By now we are looking forward to home. Snuggled up in our bungalow, with mist swirling and the rain falling steadily outside, the beginning of our journey seems a lot longer than only two months ago. After traversing Thailand and Malaysia, and with only a few days remaining (visiting friends in Singapore), Fraser Hill is the end of the ‘wild’ part of our journey.

Once home, we can begin auditioning our recordings and begin the creative process!

Tags: Malaysia, meditation music, National Parks, natural sounds, nature CD, nature download, nature music, nature sounds, sounds of nature, Thailand