Winging the Bornean Skies

Various philosophers have claimed: “people will only protect what they love”. But how can you love or even just care for something you don’t even know?

This book is not simply an identification guide. It does include many stunning pictures that will also help the novice with their identification efforts, but really the objective is to introduce the reader to the birdlife in Northern Borneo as a whole.

After introductory chapters on the various habitats found in Brunei and on birds in general, the core of this book consists of short thematic chapters about different species, their habitat and their behaviour. Written in an accessible, non-scientific, manner and larded with accompanying pictures the reader is—for a moment—drawn into the life of the described birds. Not unlikely you will look in a different way at birds after reading this book, even at the common species around you every day.

The book concludes with an overview of some of the bird watching “hot-spots” in Brunei, Sabah & Sarawak, where you can put your new way of looking at these creatures—and at nature in general—into practice.

• Foreword vii
• Preface ix
• Message xi
• Introduction 1
• Beautiful Brunei 7
• – Sea 8
• – Beach & coastal wetlands 8
• – Urban & cultivated land 9
• – The forests 11
• About birds 15
• Birds of Brunei, Sabah & Sarawak 23
• Birdwatching “hot spots” in Brunei and North Borneo 121
• Photographic bird index 128
• Acknowledgements and Further Reading 134
• Websites on Asian and Bornean birdlife 135