Borneo Bird Festival 2011 – A Walk Down Memory Lane
This special article remembers the early days of birdwatching in Sabah. The one and only bird festival was held at the Rainforest Discovery Centre, or RDC, as it is commonly called.
The Borneo Bird Festival started here and has since used this location as its home ground, seeing over a hundred thousand visitors since its humble beginnings. This is the premier birding event in Borneo, where participants come from around the world to participate in various contests.
If not, they will come for the sheer experience of attending Borneo’s only birdwatching event, held on the east coast of Sabah. If you love birding or bird photography, this is one event you should not miss.
For those planning to visit, you can also read our article on the current Borneo Bird Festival 2024, which takes place on the last weekend of October. However, it would be best to start making plans fast, as accommodations are almost sold out around the venue area. However, you can still stay in the city and travel to the festival.
Without going through more text, I will share photos I took when I attended the festival yearly. Here is the series of pictures from the Borneo Bird Festival 2011 – A Walk Down Memory Lane.
All the photos you see here were taken with a Nikon D60 in 2011. It was not a sponsored camera, but I wanted to highlight this.
Conclusion
Birdwatching in Sabah has evolved to a level where it is now the premier destination in Southeast Asia if you are heading to this part of the world. Of course, with the long-term planning done by the Sabah Tourism Board, stakeholders, and the commitment of the Sabah Bird Guides and the Borneo Bird Club, it was a team effort to make it what it is today.
Many may not realise it, but the journey was not easy, with many ups and downs. Today, everyone reaps the benefits of the last ten years of the festival and its strategies. Sabah has attended the Global BirdFair in the UK for years, formerly the Rutland Bird Fair, where the tourism board has spent hundreds of thousands of ringgit on promotions.
Currently, Sabah holds the top spot for birdwatching in Malaysia. With no other state showing interest in developing this high-yield tourism niche, Sabah continues to attract both repeat and new birding visitors.
Birdwatching Asia, together with MalaysiaAsia, has been promoting the Borneo Bird Festival from its early days until today, hoping to reach a broader scope of markets worldwide. With the rise of the internet, articles like this are one of the driving factors that help other birders and photographers understand more about birding in Sabah.
