Hornbills & Halmahera…(Indonesia) 25th July

The Spice Islands, or Moluccas, and their delectable set of endemics awaited; and so after a short time in Tangkoko around our lodge adding the endemic Sulawesi Babbler, and then en-route to Manado a superb pair of Knobbed Hornbills, we boarded a plane, then a speedboat to take us from Manado in Sulawesi to the often explosively volcanic island of Ternate, from where we sped to the island of Halmahera in the northern Moluccas. There was no rest for the wicked though, and we were keen to get stuck into the endemics of the Moluccas that afternoon, which we did in fine style: So

mbre Kingfisher behaved well, as did several Blue-and-white Kingfishers which adorned the roadside wires, White Cockatoo followed, and a bounty of Blyth’s Hornbills provided a heady supporting cast. 

The day ended like our first in Indonesia, with a scops-owl, though this time the Moluccan Scops-Owl staring down at us with those impressive eyes that only owls possess.

 A very special avian encounter on Halmahera to follow…

Kingfishers “on Special” at Tangkoko!…(Sulawesi) 24th July

With two lifer kingfishers, plus a nighttime Ruddy the day before quickly proving what a great place for kingfishers Tangkoko National Park is you’d think we were done with this group? Far from it. A gaping hole remained on our kingfisher quest, where the endemic Lilac-cheeked Kingfisher should sit, so we set about in earnest to find this on this morning. However, before we scoured the forest for that beauty we spent the early hours of the morning racking up lifers at a scenic lookout over the forest. Lifebirds came thick and fast, with the endemic Spot-tailed Goshawk and 2 species of Hanging-parrots (Large Sulawesi Hanging-Parrot and Small Sulawesi Hanging-Parrots) being standouts. Then, after picking up a Pale-blue Monarch, we finally tracked down a Lilac-cheeked Kingfisher sitting quietly in the forest understory.

The rest of the morning was fairly quiet, although we did have the surreal experience of birding from within a troop of macaques, and an impressive one at that, the endemic Celebes Crested Macaque; which were all around us (including babies), for some time. However, we were gutted to find that, again, the Ochre-bellied Boobooks (an endemic owl), were not at their regular daytime roost site.

In the afternoon we took a side trip into the mangroves for yet another lifer kingfisher, and although the tide made us wait impatiently before we could enter their favored creek, we managed to track down three separate Great-billed Kingfishers as hoped, along with the scarce White-rumped Cuckooshrike too, and an ever so obliging Great-billed Heron perched on an offshore boat. The evening closed with us watching a pair of Sulawesi Nightjars hawking overhead.

 Next up: the Spice Island of Halmahera…

Entering "Wallace's Lab"...INDONESIA (23rd July)

I have yearned to go to Indonesia, and especially the “Wallacean” islands of Sulawesi and Halmahera for years. Eastern Indonesia was where the great biologist Alfred Russell Wallace^*1 came up with his theories of evolution that were later made famous by Charles Darwin; and these islands are packed with endemic birds and mammals of the highest order. After my epic journey to the Far East from Ecuador in South America, I had undertaken 5 flights and spent more than 30 hours getting there. So yes, I arrived exhausted, but that did not stop me from birding on that first afternoon. I met fellow “Tropical Birder” Keith Barnes at the airport in Manado, and our experienced local guide, Nurlin. And after changing up enough local currency to be able to call myself a millionaire, we headed west to Tangkoko National Park, on Sulawesi’s northern, Minahasa Peninsula. Bar a Eurasian Tree Sparrow that unceremoniously stole the title of my first bird in Sulawesi, almost the first bird I saw was a super Green-backed Kingfisher shortly after entering the national park. 

Tangkoko is a kingfisher’s paradise, and this was highlighted further when another lifebird showed up in the form of a Sulawesi Dwarf-Kingfisher, then later, at night, when Keith found his lifer Ruddy Kingfisher sleeping in a large palm. 

Other highlights included a spritely group of Sulawesi Dwarf-Hornbill, and then we closed the afternoon/evening by watching the famous “Tarsier Emergence” whereby a team of Spectral Tarsiers emerged from their daytime roost in a massive ficus tree within the park, posing at eye-level, and mere feet away; an intimate and unforgettable encounter indeed. 

We were not done just then though, as on the way out of the park we chalked up our first owl of the trip with the endemic Sulawesi Scops-Owl glaring impressively into our spotlight. I had longed to visit this place indeed, and I was quickly coming to realize that it might just live up to all the hype!

*1 See Alfred Russell Wallace’s acclaimed publication “The Malay Archipelago”

More to come from “Wallacea”, and Tangkoko, soon…

The Pull of the Far East...(19 July)

OK, so tonight I leave for the Far East once more; so after a month at home in Ecuador (where I managed to pick up a lifer Stygian Owl-see below-despite almost no birding through illness), I am heading back to the Orient, though this time to "new shores": Sulawesi and Halmahera in Indonesia. 

As I never really finished off my China blogging (because of illness), here are some highlights from my final time in China in June...

We spent the end of the China tour in the vast, under-populated, province of Qinghai. In just a few days there we racked up a total of six different snowfinches (Blanford's, Henri's, White-rumped, Black-winged, Rufous-necked, and Pere David's Snowfinches), including all six in one morning! Along with this stellar cast, we picked up Qinghai's most famous avian resident: Przevalski's Rosefinch, which is in its own family of the same name. The short scrubby slope where it was found also yielded Brown Accentor and Robin Accentors. 

Up near Rubber Mountains Pass we found a nesting pair of White-winged Redstart, while on the Gobi Desert-like plains of Chaka beyond, we found the striking Mongolian Ground-Jay, which was as interesting in flight as it was on the ground, with its spectacular pied wing pattern. These flats also yielded double figures of Pallas's Sandgrouse one morning, as party after party passed low overhead. A little further afield, on the far side of Chaka, we birded a craggy valley, which was exceptional for partridges, producing three different species: Przevalski's, Tibetan and Daurian Partridges, as well as Wallcreeper, a spanking breeding male Pine Bunting, and a solitary Himalayan Snowcock. Back on the Tibetan Plateau we admired Bar-headed Geese in good numbers, a Tibetan Fox terrorising a pika colony, and a roadside Little Owl that had chosen to nest in a road sign.

We returned to the city of Xining for a final night, afterwhich John, Ken, and I (who were heading out on later flights), birded a mountain overlooking the city (Beishan). This was a superb morning's birding, with nearly half a dozen or so Pale Rosefinches found around the deserted farm buildings, lots of Ring-necked Pheasants "crowed" from the hillsides, and Meadow Buntings seemed to pop up from every bush, (a lifebird no less). We also came upon a couple of pairs of Pere David's Laughingthrushes too. A great time to end my recent tour of China. I am already missing the food of both Sichuan (which is rightly world famous), and Qinghai (which is strangely not famous at all), and, of course, the birds; I hope I am back again next spring!

Reports to come from Asia again, very soon...

City Life....ECUADOR (13-14 July)

I went into the doctors late last week expecting to pick up a prescription for some pills, and then leave. However, I went in with a gall bladder and came out without one, (plus some pills of course)! This was a little unexpected, and so my weekend of heavy work planned in prep. for my upcoming trip to Indonesia had to be abandoned for "rest" (=boredom). Luckily, some UK birders changed the face of my weekend when they walked into Quito's botanical gardens, and noticed a large brown shape sitting prominently, which turned out to be none other than a STYGIAN OWL! Luckily for me they were not the only ones in the park that day, and noticing a man with a birding t-shirt on, they informed him of the owl. This happened to be resident birder Roger Ahlman, who then put the word out online. Ironically, I heard from Andrew Spencer (who had picked up Roger's post), who was in Colorado at the time! The modern web of information! No matter though, news that there was a Stygian Owl sitting in the open, ten minutes from my "sickbed" was too much to bare; I mean, how can a birder rest knowing of this news! I soon got in contact with fellow Tropical Birder and good friend Jose Illanes and we were soon racing towards the park, with one pair of bins to share between the three of us (Jose, his girlfriend Cathy, and me), as there had been little time to gather things in the ensuing panic. 

As we entered the well-manicured gardens I relayed the directions to Jose, who quickly declared "I've got it!" And there it sat all day long, while birders turned up to pay their respects, locals played football noisily in the park alongside, and children came to get their faces painted in full view of this very unconcerned owl! 

Then I bumped into first the finders of the owl, who had news of an even rarer find: an American Pygmy-Kingfisher in the gardens too (totally bizarre in the highlands of Quito at 2800m, as this is normally an Amazonian species), and I soon found myself watching this handsome little kingfisher with Roger Ahlman. It had been a strange and bizarre day, with one lifer, and one very unexpected vagrant kingfisher.

I returned there today with Iain Campbell, and although he said the kingfisher was around, in my short visit (due to recuperation duties I have right now), I did not see it. However, the owl was sitting pretty and was even more open than yesterday, much to my pleasure and many local people's too, who enjoyed the use of our binoculars and seeing the photos of the bird on our camera screens. A weekend, and week to remember for so many reasons!

Jiuzhaigou Part II...CHINA (3rd June)

After some long hikes, and some frustrations the day before within this popular, well-regulated, park, our man on the ground Frank, (a legend in his own lifetime by virtue of the phenomenal food provided by him throughout the tour, whether it be in or out of the field; AND his ability to negotiate around some of the trickiest issues when birding in China-i.e. roadblock and the like), rustled up a private vehicle for us within Jiuzhaigou for the day. This led to my best day of birding of birding within the park in all my 6 visits to the area. We started by heading up to the highest point within the park, Long Lake (3150m/10,300ft). Although this area is very popular among tourists, for the amazing views over this scenic lake, which is surrounded by peaks capped with white tops, and draped on their lower slopes by tall pine forests, the first buses were not due until later, and so we enjoyed some time alone (bar some staff setting up their stalls for the day). However, before we had even reached the end of the road, which terminates at the lake, a large blue shape at the road verge, caused us to call the bus to sudden halt: Blue Eared-Pheasant. In the ensuing panic to get the bus manoeuvred into position so all could see the bird well enough, the bus driver backed the vehicle into a stone wall! Amazingly, the driver merely laughed at this, his pride a little crumpled like the bumper, and then re-positioned the vehicle. Unfortunately  by that point the bird had retreated back into the pines, so we got out and surveyed the grassy slope, in the forlorn hope of finding it again, only to witness the bird scamper out from cover and cross a broad, open patch of grass in full view of all of us!

Once we reached Long Lake, several attempts were needed to persuade the shy Snowy-cheeked (Sukatschev's) Laughingthrush to show to us, the third individual tried with remarkable success for a notoriously shy bird. We got it just in time before the first large batch of tourists arrived for the day, which was our queue to leave for lower elevations....This largely meant a revisit to the "Robin Valley" on the hunt for the elusive, though handsome, Rufous-headed Robin. This bird has currently just one known breeding site, (this narrow valley), which boasts only around 4-5 territories. The bird's presence was quickly confirmed though, through its rich, almost nightingale-like song, but over several hours we got only frustration as a few glimpsed the bird, but none with full satisfaction. Finally, after lunch and not a lot else, we went for a walk deeper into the woods, where, amazingly, a male hopped onto an open trail in front of us, and allowed us all more than respectable views as it remained there for a few treasured minutes!

Our next stop was a scenic one within the Rize Valley - at Pearl Shoales - an absolutely dramatic set of interlinked cascades, many of which have tall trees growing out of the water within them. We weaved our way past the Buddhist prayers flags, and joined the crowds admiring a very special landscape indeed, where we were sidetracked by the odd bird too, such as White-throated Dipper, White-capped Dipper, and even a male Rufous-bellied Niltava just off the official trail.

Finally, we rounded out the day with Maroon-backed Accentor, a group of Three-banded Rosefinches, and the odd male Vinaceous Rosefinch at the Primeval Forest.

 The next day we were to traverse the Tibetan Plateau en-route to the Tibetan town of Maerkang. A long, though bird-packed day...

The Long March...CHINA (2nd June)

This was the first of two days for us in Jiuzhaigou National Park, in northern Sichuan. This park, designated as both a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and a World Biosphere Reserve, consists of a number of dramatic valleys dotted with Tibetan villages, which lend to its name "Valley of Nine Villages". As a birder, traveling to this park presents its own challenges: the park does not open until 07.00am (well after dawn), and your movements within the park are restricted by having to use the large park buses. Although, us birders, do get frustrated by these rules, it is hard not to see why they are necessary, when they can get over a million visitors in a single year. Still, the valley remains poorly known to western tourists, strangely, in spite of its extraordinary beauty, it is rare to see western tourists in the park, which are outnumbered massively by Chinese, Japanese and Korean tourists.

Our regular way of getting around the park rules, is to track down a local driver who will drop us off at places between the official bus stops, or take us up to some of the official areas before the first park buses, and tourists, arrive. This has worked well over the past 5 years for us, but came unraveled on this day, when our man on the ground, Frank, simply could not find anyone willing to do this. (Although, while he was looking we did find a Spectacled Fulvetta beside the large LCD screen at the park entrance!). What this meant for us was, we had to undertake our very own "Long March", and head 4km up the road to a narrow valley where we'd hoped to find the park's rarest bird: Rufous-headed Robin. As we walked up towards the "Robin Valley" we managed to find some interesting birds though: more Daurian Redstarts (one of which was actually hopping along the high-tech ticket barrier as we entered the park); our first angry Sooty Tits (an endemic species); and an aggressive  Chinese Nuthatch, which took particular exception to hearing another nuthatch in its territory.

After spending considerable time in the narrow valley searching for the elusive Rufous-headed Robin, only a few of us who were positioned at the front of the line, (Dixie and I, mainly), got a good look (or indeed any look) at the robin, and so we vowed to return the next day. So, we dropped down lower in the valley and walked around one of the myriad scenic lakes in the valley, where we found several parties of the endemic Spectacled Parrotbill hiding in the reeds, and, finally, found a Pere David's Laughingthrush on the dry scrubby hillside above our hotel in the town, to round out the day later on.

While we had endured some frustrations, (the long march, the robin etc.), we had added some key new birds, and I relished another day, and more challenges, in Jiuzhaigou to come the next day...