Day 325: An Endemic Birdfest
Noah looks forward to the plethora of endemic species of birds
Sulawesi has to offer.
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| Noah Striker and Monal in Lore Lindu Park |
On the short hop to Makassar today, I crossed a significant geographical boundary
called the Wallace Line, which runs between Borneo and Sulawesi. This line
is named after a British naturalist, Alfred Russel Wallace, who explored these
islands in the mid-1800s and noticed that the fauna west of this line are
mostly Asian while those on the east side are more Australian. This is because
Borneo and everything westward was connected to mainland Asia relatively
recently, while deeper water here has been a barrier for the past 50 million
years. This means that the birds on Sulawesi are very different than those on
Borneo, even though the two islands aren’t very far apart. The island of
Sulawesi alone has about 100 endemic species of birds!
Monal and
I visited a patch of forest where we hoped to find a Black-ringed White-eye, a
bird which lives only in this part of Sulawesi. When we found the bird a short
while later, we turned around and headed straight back to the airport. The two
of us caught an afternoon flight up to Palu, in north-central Sulawesi, and
wound into the mountains this evening. Looking forward to an endemic birdfest
tomorrow.
Day 326: Noah Finds 36 New Birds
A fantastic day in the Lore Lindu National
Park.
November 22, 2015: Lore Lindu, Sulawesi — Wow,
where to start? Practically every bird I saw today was a lifer! Monal and I,
along with the company of two locals called Herson and Papa Ain, spent the
whole day in the highlands of Lore Lindu National Park, racking up endemic
birds.
Lore Lindu is a huge park and UNESCO world biosphere reserve
protecting more than 2,000 square kilometers in central Sulawesi. It hosts some
awesome birds, notably the Hylocitrea, Ivory-backed Woodswallow, and
Maroon-backed Whistler, all of which we found this morning. The forest here is
lush and cool, and we lucked out with good weather. All in all, a fantastic day
in the field.
I just missed one bird I’d hoped for, and it wasn’t in today’s
cards. Lore Lindu is home to a bird whose official name is the Diabolical
Nightjar (sometimes called the Satanic Nightjar)—one of the best bird names on
the planet! Unfortunately, the mountain track where it can be found is
currently closed because of an Indonesian military operation against some
suspected terrorists hiding in this forest. Not even the locals can go up there
right now, so the Diabolical Nightjar is, for the moment, inaccessible. They
say the forest should be safely cleared out by January. Next time…
Meanwhile, 36 new birds makes the best day I’ve had in quite a
while. It’s good to be across Wallace’s Line and into some new territory!
Day 327: Over A Dozen Birds With the Same Name
From the Sulawesi Serpent-Eagle to the Sulawesi Thrush.
November
23, 2015: Palu, Sulawesi — Today was a clean-up
day. After yesterday’s gluttonous run of birds at Lore Lindu, we didn’t have
much left to look for this morning, and Monal, Papa Ain, Herson and I scraped
for a few more birds before heading back down to Palu.
In a day
and a half at Lore Lindu, I saw: Sulawesi Serpent-Eagle, Sulawesi Hawk-Eagle,
Sulawesi Goshawk, Sulawesi Woodpecker, Sulawesi Hanging-Parrot, Sulawesi
Myzomela, Sulawesi Cicadabird, Sulawesi Drongo, Sulawesi Leaf Warbler, Sulawesi
White-eye, Sulawesi Babbler, Sulawesi Streaked Flycatcher, Sulawesi
Blue-Flycatcher, and Sulawesi Thrush. That’s 14 birds with the same
name— sure to be some kind of record! At least it makes them easy to
remember.
We ended
the day in some rice paddies outside of Palu, where a large, swirling flock of
munias were feeding on grass seeds. Most were Pale-headed Munias, with good
numbers of Chestnut Munias and Scaly-breasted Munias mixed in. As the afternoon
closed out, Monal picked out two Black-faced Munias in the flock. From Knobbed
Hornbills this morning to munias this evening… all in a day’s work
Day 328: The Maleo
In search of Sulawesi’s most-wanted bird.
This part
of Asia has a big bird list, but many of those birds are spread out on various
small islands, which makes it more difficult to be efficient. If I stay in one
spot for two days in a row, there aren’t many new birds to find on the second
day (at Lore Lindu, for instance, I saw 36 new birds on the first day and just
seven on the second day). These diminishing returns must constantly be
weighed against the time lost to traveling onward. It’s a delicate balance!
Monal
wanted to reach a special spot before dusk today, so we pressed through
Manado’s traffic with no stops. At 4 p.m. we pulled up at a couple of huts
by a river in the forest. This, Monal said, was the nesting site of a very strange
bird called the Maleo.
The Maleo
is endemic to Sulawesi. It looks kind of like a chicken, though it’s not
closely related to chickens; it’s in a family called “megapodes.” The Maleo
nests in loose colonies where, like turtles, these birds bury their eggs in the
ground and cover them with dirt. An adult Maleo isn’t much bigger than a
chicken, but each egg is five times larger than a typical chicken egg. When the
Maleo’s eggs hatch underground, the chicks must dig their way out (sometimes
more than a meter to the surface!) and fend for themselves.
Maleos are
endangered and red-listed. A few years ago, a program was started to hatch eggs
in incubators before releasing the chicks back into the wild, which protects
them from predators. You can still see Maleos at a couple of sites where blinds
have been constructed for discreet viewing.
The place
we visited this afternoon had a wooden tower next to the nesting ground, and a
ranger accompanied us while we waited for the Maleos to make an appearance.
Below us was a patch of bare dirt near the river bank with half a dozen
recently dug-out spots where the birds bury their eggs. One Maleo can lay 12
eggs in a year, and there are about eight pairs using this site. We waited for
an hour before one called loudly from across the river, and we heard a whirr of
wings as it landed somewhere in a tree on the slope nearby.
It seemed
like the bird would strut into the open at any minute, but we waited another
hour without getting a visual. At intervals we could hear the Maleo moving
around in the foliage, but it was too dense to see where it perched. As the
light faded into dusk, so did my hopes of seeing Sulawesi’s most-wanted bird,
and with darkness upon us we reluctantly climbed down from the viewing tower.
“We have a
difficult choice now,” said Monal when we reached the ground. “We can come back
here in the morning to try again, or we can go somewhere else for several other
birds. The two places are in opposite directions, so we can’t do both.”
As I
digested this decision, the ranger was quietly looking around. Suddenly, before
I could answer Monal’s question, he grabbed my arm and pointed upward. There,
in the tree right above us, was the Maleo on its roost—we could just barely see
it through a gap in the foliage! In the last five minutes before it was too
dark to see, I snapped a couple of grainy photos. Oh, what a wonderful feeling
it is to see a bird you thought you’d missed, especially when that bird happens
to be a Maleo!
Day 329: Rafting for Birds
Noah catches up on sleep and finds a Speckled Boobook.
November 25, 2015: Tangkoko, Sulawesi — For
the first time in a long time, I had nearly eight full hours of sleep last
night, and woke up at five feeling refreshed. I swear, there just aren’t enough
hours in the day. Whoever repeats this trip a few million years from now will
have a big advantage, because the Earth’s rotation will have slowed enough to
add an extra hour.
Seriously, did you know that when the dinosaurs lived, a day was
only 23 hours long? That would really have handicapped a big year! Of course,
the dinosaurs were birds, and today’s birds are dinosaurs (slightly more
evolved), but counting dinosaurs might have been more hazardous. A logical
conclusion lies here somewhere, which is that I need more sleep.
Monal and I kicked around a place called Toraut this morning
accompanied by a local ranger named Hendrik. Touraut is a nice patch of lowland
forest on the north tip of Sulawesi (the part that looks like a four-legged
starfish’s raised fist) with some equally nice birds. To get into the forest,
Hendrik poled us across a shallow river on a bamboo raft—a new method of
transportation for my year list. I saw a Speckled Boobook, a pair of
Maroon-chinned Fruit-Doves, and a Lilac-cheeked Kingfisher which didn’t mind
being stared at. By the time Hendrik poled us back out of the forest before
lunch, I was sweaty enough to consider just wading across the river. Yesterday
I slipped into a rice paddy and wet my shoes up to the knee, and didn’t mind a
bit.
We spent the afternoon retracing yesterday’s route through
Manado’s traffic jams and out the other side, arriving at Tangkoko after dark.
Sulawesi’s roads are twisty and narrow, sometimes barely wide enough to admit
two vehicles traveling in opposite directions, so getting from one place to
another is a deliberate process. I amused myself by watching my iPhone’s GPS
readout, tracking our speed; we rarely exceeded 40 miles per hour on the open
highway and averaged a walking pace in towns. This allowed plenty of
opportunity to soak in the smells of fried fish, the sights of fresh produce
stands, the sounds of prayers being sung at mosques, and the feel of the ocean
breeze as we slid along the coast. More birds await in the morning.
Day 330: Earthquake!
A little volcanic shakin' going on.
November 26, 2015: Tangkoko, Sulawesi — I
woke at 3 this morning to the sound of something falling on the ground and with
the distinct, unsteady feeling that my bed was vibrating. The shaking stopped
in a few seconds and, after wondering sleepily what had just happened, I
returned to my dreams.
An hour and a half later, I asked Monal at breakfast if he’d
felt anything during the night. “Yes, I woke up too,” he said. “That was an
earthquake. We get them all the time. There are 11 active volcanoes in this
area!”
It might have been a tiny one, but I was excited. My first-ever
real, live earthquake! I’ve managed to avoid even the slightest tremor during
my entire 29 years on this planet thus far (we don’t get them much in Oregon),
so I was stoked to get shaken up this morning.
Then I remembered something else. “Hey, happy Thanksgiving!” I
said to Monal.
He looked blank. “Huh?”. At 5 o’clock this morning, I found
myself explaining the traditions of Thanksgiving, with Halloween thrown in for
good measure, to an Indonesian audience. Both holidays began to sound pretty
weird the more I described them (Black Friday… Jack-o-Lanterns…). Which brings
up an interesting point: Is is still Thanksgiving if you’re in a place that
doesn’t celebrate it, and if it’s not actually Thanksgiving yet (because of the
time difference) in the U.S.? In the past few years, I’ve spent three
Thanksgivings in Antarctica, one in the Galapagos, and one in Amazonian
Ecuador, so this one had a lot to live up to. I needn’t have worried. It was
yet another fantastic day in the field.
The highlight came this afternoon when Monal and I boarded an
outrigger canoe, a new form of transportation for me, which was piloted by two
men from the local fishing village. We launched straight off the beach, crossed
a bay in the sunshine, and meandered up a twisty channel into a mangrove forest
at high tide. This was the realm of the Great-billed Kingfisher, a skulky
Sulawesi endemic, and Monal was on high alert for this special bird.
He spotted it soon enough, perched on a mangrove branch
overhanging the water. We admired the kingfisher, turned around, and floated
back out to sea, where Lesser Frigatebirds wheeled overhead and Pacific
Reef-Egrets dotted the rocks under the watchful eye of a White-bellied
Sea-Eagle.
I have many things to be thankful for, from a supportive family
to the wonderful community of birders around the world who have helped at every
step of this year’s adventure. My dinner today included whole fried fish, rice,
and veggies. I’ll save the cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie for next
year—meanwhile, Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
Day 331: The Tiniest Primate
Noah comes face to face with a tarsier monkey, the littlest
primate on Earth.
November 27, 2015: Minahasa, Sulawesi — A
local guide named Anes spent five hours this morning with Monal and me,
tramping around in big circles inside the Tangkoko Batuangas Forest. It was dry
enough that leaves crunched underfoot; part of the forest had burned last
month in a large wildfire. Even so, the humidity was unrelenting. I dripped
sweat standing still.
We were hoping to bump into a type of owl called the
Ochre-bellied Boobook, which is often found inside this forest, and we had some
brief excitement when an owl materialized at midday. Unfortunately we saw it
too well, and the owl turned out to be a lookalike Speckled Boobook, which
Monal and I had already seen a couple of days ago.
We did see several Green-backed Kingfishers, a Sulawesi
Dwarf-Kingfisher, and a couple of Lilac-cheeked Kingfishers, none of them near
water. The tramping continued until today’s heat kicked in, and we let the
Ochre-bellied go before lunch.
This part of north Sulawesi has a
classic tropical coastline and Indonesian fishing culture. It’s fun to explore
an island that, before this year, I’d barely even heard of except in birding
terms. Sulawesi, in general, isn’t a big tourist destination (several times
this week, locals have come up to ask if they could take a photo with me), but
it’s an interesting place. I saw two fun primates in the Tangkoko forest along
with today’s birds: A tarsier (the world’s smallest primate) and the black
macaque, which has no tail. Both very strange looking.
Birding Without Border
Day 332: Leaving Sulawesi
Noah begins a four-day journey into the heart of Papua New
Guinea.
November 28, 2015: Makassar, Sulawesi — After
a week in Sulawesi, it’s time to fly. New places await. I’ve hit the ceiling on
birds here, and time is getting short…
Monal and I had a great seven days on this island, and I hope I
can return someday to see those few endemics I missed this time. You can see
photos of many of these birds on Monal’s website and
get inspired to visit Sulawesi, too!
At dawn today we staked out a lake outside Manado, where I
picked up two new “hens,” Black-backed Swamphen and Dusky Moorhen, before
heading for the airport. This afternoon I took a short flight down to Makassar,
where I’ll connect with onward legs tomorrow morning. Today begins four
straight days in the air—a journey that will take me, step by step, into the
heart of Papua New Guinea.
