The Mountains of Taiwan

March 2019: Two Days in the Mountains in Search of Taiwan's Endemic Birds

When I was a little kid (six or seven) I had a couple of what I called "big books", one of which was a cheap coffee-table-type slab called Encyclopedia of the Natural World or something of the sort.  It may have been short on science and biology but it had lots and lots of photographs and a series of painted plates that were designed to show the variety of species and the range of adaptations and forms of life around the world.  There might be a page on Lizards for example that featured Komodo Dragon and Marine Iguana along with Basilisk, Gila Monster, chameleons, skinks and geckos.  One page covered whales and dolphins, another butterflies, or trees, or primates; all of nature covered in perhaps 30 pages.  Birds were represented by perhaps four pages and maybe sixty species selected to show the awesome variety of the birds of the world.  There were Ostriches and Cassowaries along with Birds of Paradise and Hummingbirds, Penguins and Albatrosses, Parrots and Lyrebirds.  I spend a LOT of time staring at these pages as a kid, and imagining seeing all these wonderful, strange and exotic creatures.  Even at that age I was familiar with the common birds that lived in our garden and could draw comparisons between the familiar in the yard and the exotic in the book.  One species that still sticks in my mind to this day, perhaps because it was so unlikely as one of the chosen sixty, was the 'Formosan Firecrest' an incalculably more exotic version of the Goldcrest that we had in Wales.  Who knew that it would take me 45 years to actually see one ....

Thursday, March 28 - Taipei

An evening flight from Hong Kong after business meetings and I finally made it to Taiwan, something I had been planning to do for literally years.  I was met a the airport by Kuan-Chieh Hung otherwise known as "Chuck", founder and owner of Taiwan Bird Guide who picked me up in a rental car for a three hour drive South, getting ready for birds first thing Friday morning.  The only bird I recorded that evening was Savanna Nightjar which was calling near a gas station at a late night gas stop.  We also stopped at a 7-Eleven and picked up a bag of plastic-wrapped sandwiches and junk-food ... apparently the food options were going to be pretty limited in the mountains the next day ... this was not going to be a gourmet food trip.

Friday, March 29 - Dasyueshan Forest Road

Dawn found us in the foothills as we began two days of birding the famous Dasyueshan Forest Road, a paved two-lane route that snakes up through the mountains, crossing different types of woodland habitat and offering opportunities to see almost all the endemic birds of Taiwan.  Here the birding sites were defined by kilometer numbers but the best sites could also often be spotted in advance because there were photographers already there looking for the star birds at various known and traditional spots.

White-eared Sibia and Steere's Liocichla

At our first major stop we joined a half dozen photographers at what was clearly a stakeout and while we waited for the main target I got my first Taiwan endemics with Taiwan Yellow-Tit, Taiwan Yuhina, White-eared Sibia, Black-necklaced Scimitar-Babbler and several others all visible along the road.  We also took some time to track down some calling birds like the beautifully subtle Steere's Liocichla and the elegant Rusty Laughingthrush, then chased a fast moving group of Rufous-crowned Laughingthrushes up the road a bit to get good views.  Probably a third of the island's endemics in the first hour, not a bad start.

Rusty Laughingthrush and Rufous-crowned Laughingthrush

The star bird at this spot though was SWINHOE'S PHEASANT, one of the two stunning endemic pheasants to be found on this road and this spot was something of a photographers' stakeout for it.  Sure enough, after twenty minutes of waiting, a male casually walked down through the woods and crossed the road right in front of us accompanied by the whirring of multiple cameras.

Swinhoe's Pheasant

The pattern then for the rest of the day was similar, we'd drive another half mile up the road then stop and bird.  At each stop we added more endemics or some other cool bird like Little Forktail, not endemic but a lifer for me and a very neat species.

Little Forktail

Eventually mid afternoon, we made it to the top of the road where a nature center of sorts, a parking lot, and a concentration of several dozen photographers marked the stakeout for MIKADO PHEASANT.  We joined one of the stakeout stops for a while, not my favorite type of birding, so inevitably I got antsy and we wandered off to look for birds before returning several times to check again for pheasants.  There were of course more endemics in the area, the confiding White-whiskered Laughingthrush, Taiwan Rosefinch, Black-Throated Tit and Taiwan Fulvetta.  There were also some (to my mind) very European birds like Eurasian Nutcracker and White-backed Woodpecker in the higher altitude pines a reminder that were were in the Palearctic after all, albeit the Eastern Palearctic.  That last fact also reminded me that I hadn't seen my Formosan Firecrest, now re-named as FLAMECREST, yet so we kept an eye out and got brief views of one in a mixed flock a little later on.  Not exactly what I wanted but there was still tomorrow and for now we were focussed on pheasants.

Taiwan Rosefinch and White-whiskered Laughingthrush

By now the light was starting to soften and we still didn't have a Mikado Pheasant although the photographers didn't seem too worried and sat quietly at their stake-out seemingly confident that the birds would appear.  I was getting bored though and the temperatures were dropping so I was very happy when, on our third of fourth visit to the stake-out a female Mikado Pheasant wandered out of the bamboo and started feeding on the road near the photographers (the feeding of birds is illegal here, but clearly widely done and there was grain scattered on the roadside in several places).  The first female was later joined by a second and, even though I was ready to leave when we saw them, we then had to stay as we were trapped by the photographers who were shooting literally thousands of photographs of the birds and we couldn't pass without flushing their subjects.  In the end the delay was fortuitous though as a male pheasant wandered out to join his females.  What a spectacular bird.

Mikado Pheasant

Eventually the birds wandered off and we could make our way to a government guest house, a decidedly local buffet dinner, and rooms complete with great piles of blankets to guard against cold night temperatures.  I at least slept incredibly well.

Saturday, March 30 - Dasyueshan Forest Road

Up early again and some birding around the lodge produced another female Mikado Pheasant and some decent views of Taiwan Partridge, which we'd heard the day before but not seen.  We also got some Taiwan Barwings in the trees at the lodge and a close encounter with a Taiwan Serow, a strange endemic goat-antelope that I'd hoped we might be able to see while I was there.

Reeve's Muntjac and Taiwan Serow

Most of the morning we spent working a nice, quiet (no photographers) trail near the top of the road.  Almost as soon as we'd left the parking lot we encountered a very tame male Mikado Pheasant right next to the trail and spent a fair amount of time enjoying the bird at close range without the constant whirring of cameras.  A much more satisfying experience than the one surrounded by photographers the day before, and it got better when we also got good views of the Flamecrest and added a few more of the last endemics we needed on the mountain.

No cropping this one, just too close.

Coming down from the mountain mid-day we made a stop at a fern farm in the foothills to look for another set of birds.  There were a few endemics more easily found here and we were able to get them all fairly quickly.  There was Taiwan Bamboo-Partridge, Collared Finchbill, Dusky Fulvetta and Taiwan Scimitar-Babbler and by now we were down to the last three possible endemics (assuming the nomadic Taiwan Thrush wasn't around and we didn't have time to go to the South for Styan's Bulbul).

Black Bulbul and Collared Finchbill

Next up was Taiwan Hwamei, easy to hear but not easy to see ... but we needed to see it because escaped Chinese Hwamei have become established on Taiwan.  We spent a fair amount of time stalking a singing bird before being able to see it well and satisfy ourselves that we had a 'good one'.  With that in the bag we were just about to drive to another location to look for Chestnut-bellied Tit, when one popped up on a power line right over our heads ... we were definitely on a roll, and one bird away from getting all of our targets in two days.

Malayan Night-Heron

Taiwan Blue-Magpie

Our last target was Taiwan Blue-Magpie but on the way we stopped to look for Malayan Night-Heron in a local park (this species seems to love exclusively in parks and gardens as far as I can tell).  Finally we successfully tacked down the magpie at Shimen Reservoir and headed back to Taipei for a night in a motel near the airport and the long journey back to the US for me.  I was absolutely exhausted but very happy to have seen basically all the available Taiwan endemic birds in such a short time.  Of course two days was nowhere near enough to do justice to this unique island but we did see an awful lot and Chuck worked his ass off to make sure I had a great experience.  So will I be back?  I'd like to think so, there's still the Styan's Bulbul after all, and the way things are getting split these days I'm sure there'll be reason to re-visit ....

Ever feel like you're being watched?  Taiwan Serow in the forest

Whiskered Pitta and Bicol Ground Warbler

October 2018: Another Quick Trip to the Philippines and More Endemics on Luzon

Friday, October 19 - Jariel's Peak

I'd managed to escape from a business trip in Hong Kong on Thursday night, hopped a quick flight, and once again found myself staying near Manila airport, exhausted but ready for more Philippines birding adventures.  This was going to be another super quick trip as I had to be back in Hong Kong on Sunday afternoon to catch a flight to New York, but hopefully I was going to get a chance to see a few more of Luzon's endemic birds before then.  This time I was with famous Robert Hutchinson, one of the owners of Birdtour Asia and a long time Philippines resident.  We set off very early on Friday morning missing most of Manila's legendary traffic and arriving at our destination well before first light.  Jariel's Peak is a apparently local beauty spot and we planned to spend a day and a half birding there but as we'd arrived in the pitch darkness the views were going to have to wait.  Besides, I was more interested in owls.

We had a specific target in mind so started stopping and listening for owls, hoping for a Luzon Scops-Owl.  We heard Philippine Scops-Owl and several Philippine Nightjars but for a time our target eluded us until Rob heard one calling and was able to use his fancy night-scope to see where the bird was.  Even though we knew which tree it was in, and it's location stood out in the green glow if the night scope, the bird was hidden from me and it took a while before I caught some movement, fired off a volley of shots into the darkness and got a photo .... it may be out of focus, but it was a life bird nevertheless!

Luzon Scops-Owl

With the owl in the bag, we could relax and as the sun came up we settled in for a very pleasant morning of birding.  The targets here were many and there were some very special birds that I very much wanted to see.  While the day was young we focussed on tracking down two colorful fruit-doves, the gaudy Flame-breasted Fruit-Dove and the subtly beautiful Cream-breasted Fruit-Dove, both Philippine endemics and both of course life birds for me.  We also started to rack up a decent species count and more of more of the local birds slowly revealed themselves and I hit a milestone of sorts when a Blue-headed Fantail became my 4,500th species.

Cream-breasted Fruit-Dove

With the more common birds joining the list, we broke away from the roadside birding to work on some of the harder to see endemics.  The WHISKERED PITTA is a jewel of a bird and like all pittas can be very difficult to see as they hop around on the forest floor, seemingly always finding a way to stay out of sight.  We heard a bird calling and scrambled into the forest along the course of a small stream working our way up through the rocky ravine to a place closer to the bird and away from the road.  Once there we found a place to sit quietly and watch while Rob played the tape hoping to make the pitta a little curious and entice it to come in closer.  After thirty minutes of waiting silently in the forest, the pitta simply popped up on a rock very close to us and stayed in view, seemingly indifferent to our presence, for the next ten minutes while it searched among the boulders along the stream for the intruder it had heard.  A very special audience with a very special bird.

It's hard to imagine that birds this colorful can be hard to see but they are
very good at hiding.  Whiskered Pitta.

The other 'hard to see' target bird was the local, endemic, BICOL GROUND-WARBLER and this bird did require some serious effort to see.  This species is a mouse of a bird, tiny, dark brown, and very fond of getting down amongst tangled weedy vegetation so dense that you might be feet from one and still never see it.  We heard a number of the ground-warblers calling in the morning but seeing one required a little more staging.  In order to get a glimpse of the bird, some gardening was involved, with Rob cutting a small break in the roadside weeds so that, if we were able to entice the bird close, we might get at least a glimpse of it as it crossed our artificial micro-clearing.  Even with the preparation it still required the bird to cooperate and we had several non-cooperative birds before one made a fatal mistake and allowed itself to be briefly seen.  There are no good photographs of this bird and I was hoping to get a few but, even though I managed to get the bird in the view finder briefly, there were always some pieces of vegetation in the way that ruined the focus.  Still, a very good bird to add to the life list.

Green-backed Tailorbird, a lifer but not a Ground-Warbler.

As the day wore on and we moved further up the road, the bird activity quietened down a little which gave us a chance to have some lunch and to watch for raptors.    We then birded our way back down the road, adding more species, getting better views of others and generally enjoying a great day of birding.

Rufous-bellied Eagle and Philippine Serpent-Eagle 

Finally, as the light started to fade, we had one more target which was a bird I had dreamed about and not expected to see.  After a long dusk vigil that stretched well past darkness though I had to accept that the Bukidnon Woodcock was going to have to stay in my dreams and not join my list (my luck with Asian Woodcock is not great and I added this miss to my missing Javan Woodcock the year before).

Saturday, October 20 - Jariel's Peak

Up well before dawn again and more time with the nightjars and scops-owls before it got light.  We had the morning to bird the same road again for birds that we hadn't seen the day before.  There weren't that many birds we hadn't seen though so we were able to relax and just enjoy the birds that came to us.

Rufous Hornbill

The highlight for me was Philippine Trogon, a bird I had hoped we'd see and were able to track one down and see it well in the understory.  We also tracked down the Philippine form of White-browed Shortwing, a species due to be split in the near future and one where I have been lucky enough now to see several of the island forms giving me several "banked" lifers when the split happens.

Philippine Trogon

All too soon it was time to leave and start making our way back to Manila.  There were two more birding stops to make though, and hopefully a few special birds to add.

Stop number one was the famous Angono Petroglyphs Museum which protected some truly ancient art but also protected some large trees and was a nesting site for the peculiar Philippine Eagle-Owl.  This is a big owl, but somehow looks odd for an eagle-owl, it also apparently eats mostly frogs, so perhaps is more closely related to the fish-owls?  Either way it's an impressive bird and for a huge owl was surprisingly hard to find even though we knew roughly which group of trees the bird was likely to be roosting in.  In the end it was a friendly local security guard who moved us to exactly the right angle to get a view of the bird, I doubt I would have found it otherwise, so very happy for friendly locals.

The huge, and well hidden Philippine Eagle-Owl.

Then finally, one last stop at La Mesa Eco Park in Quezon City, the stakeout for the endemic Ashy Thrush.  We got to the park late in the day and it was of course crowded with people leaving me wondering how a rare, endemic bird gets along in such crowded quarters.  We didn't need to worry about the people though as soon enough the heavens opened unleashing torrential tropical rain on us and leaving us trying to find shelter under trees but getting soaked through nevertheless.  The rain did chase away the crowds though and with the people gone the birding looked up we soon found an Ashy Thrush hopping around near the trails.

So a great trip, something like 35 life birds for me, and a nice addition to my weekend in Subic Bay earlier this year.  The Philippines is truly daunting with so many islands and so many endemics but at least I've started chipping away at it.  So special thanks for Rob for the expert bird guiding and good company.  I can't wait to get back to the Philippines again.

Asian Urban Birding (Part 7) - Subic Bay

A Quick Weekend in the Philippines

Friday, April 13, 2018 - Subic

I'll be honest, the Philippines intimidate me.  7,000+ islands, not all of them terribly accessible given security issues, 230+ (and growing) endemic species, and it's all a very long way from New York.  So I'd never managed to get there before this year and I certainly never had time to do the 2-3 week trips that most birding companies offer.  This year though, I did find myself in an adventurous mood and with a free weekend in Hong Kong.  So I jumped on a Philippine Air flight to Manila, met up with (super talented young) local bird guide Mark Jason Villa and headed out to spend the weekend at Subic Bay.

Subic is an odd city to say the least, a city built around the former U.S. Naval Base at Subic Bay, now converted into a port/enterprise zone for commercial development.  Much of the housing in the city is left over from the base, and many of the commercial buildings were either part of the base or grew up around it.  The former military zones of the base sprawl across a lot of land and are dotted with old structures, half grown-over concrete bunkers and the like.  It did and does contain a fair amount of forest though, and thats what attracts birders.

Concrete bunkers are everywhere in the 'forest'

We had two full days to bird the Subic area and our goals were really to see as many of the endemic species as we could.  We had plenty of time for most of the resident locals and they came quickly to the list so we spent more time focussing on a couple of special and hard to get species with some mixed results.

The fist morning was very, very birdy and I had a slew of life birds.  Among the endemic species on the first morning were Brown-breasted and Spotted Kingfishers, Philippine and Rufous Coucals, Luzon Hornbill, White-bellied, Philippine and Northern Sooty Woodpeckers, Luzon Flameback, Philippine Hanging-Parrot, Green Racket-tail, and many more.  There were also some endemics with hard to remember local names ... Guaiabero, Balicassiao, and Coleto ... which gave the list a decidedly exotic feel.  In all, 25 of the 40 species we saw on the first trail on the first morning were lifers for me.  The up-side of being on an island is that a big percentage of the common species are endemics, the down-side though is that overall diversity tends to be low, and over the next day and three quarters we only added another 13 life birds while birding hard in the habitat.

White-bellied Woodpecker and Blue-naped Parrot

After the Nabassan Trail, we went to a restricted area and birded the Hill 394 Ridge Trail in search of a specific target, the WHITE-LORED ORIOLE which led us a long way into the trail before eventually surrendering and giving us decent views in the canopy.  We also had a bonus Philippine Falconet on the trail and glimpsed an eagle of some sort through the canopy, never to be seen again.

White-lored Oriole and Rufous-crowned Bee-eater

We then made the first of four visits to a site for White-fronted Tit, apparently a bird that is very hard to get in the Philippines and can be easier to see here than elsewhere.  While we spent a lot of time here, and saw good birds ... Amethyst Brown-Dove, Spotted Buttonquail, Stripe-sided Rhabdornis, etc. but despite Mark's hard work we couldn't come up with the tit.  Can't see everything I guess.

Red Junglefowl and Green Racquet-tail 

With two nights in Subic, we did have the opportunity to eat some great local food (including the amazing Adobo and the more challenging Sisig) and to go owling after dinner both nights.  We had lots of Luzon Boobooks, some Chocolate Boobooks, a couple of Philippine Scops-Owls and a Great Eared-Nightjar all with the added bonus of wandering around the abandoned concrete bunkers and military buildings in the dark.  An interesting experience.

Coleto

Sisig ... essentially chopped pig face.  I was doing fine with it until I bit down on a (pig's) canine-tooth ...
the taste was great though, I want to explore more Philippine cuisine ...

So overall, only 71 species for the weekend, but 38 of them were new for me.  More importantly, I finally got to the Philippines and started my Philippine list.  38 endemics down, 200-ish to go.  I'm sure it won't be my last trip there ....

A Weekend in Borneo

Making the most of a Free Weekend in Singapore to get a few Life Birds.


Birding trips to Borneo usually last two to three weeks.  They include time in the highlands of Kinabalu National Park and then usually some additional rainforest sites in lowland Sabah with the more intrepid birders going on to Sarawak for some range-restricted rarities.  I have never had the opportunity to take a trip like this but have always wanted to go to Borneo and see some of the amazing birds they have there.

As a child I heard stories of the Bornean rainforest from my father, who had fought there as a British Army Paratrooper in the '60s in a conflict between Indonesia and newly independent Malaysia.  He never spoke about the fighting, but he did have endless tales of flying lizards and flying snakes, orangutans and giant biting insects of various sorts.  For 25 years I've looked at trip descriptions in Birding Tour Company catalogues but somehow never got to Borneo.  So, this year, determined to make more out of free weekends on business trips, I took a chance, jumped on a flight from Singapore to Kota Kinabalu after work on Friday night, met up with Wilbur Goh of Bird Tours Asia, and set off for a day and a half of birding on island I had so long anticipated seeing.

Forest and Mountain at Kinabalu National Park

Saturday, April 7th - Kinabalu National Park

A very early start, and a drive through winding mountain roads in the pre-dawn light, took us to the fabled Kinabalu National Park.  Any illusions of heading into the wilderness were quickly disabused as the sun came up and revealed good roads, pretty scenery, and not a lot of forest remaining in what seemed like a terribly small park, especially given how famous it is.  Still, the birds were supposed to be there so, after a quick roadside breakfast where several other birding groups passed by us on the road, we got down to business.

First identifiable bird of the day was an Eyebrowed Jungle-Flycatcher feeding in the road as it got light enough to see.  A life bird and soon joined by others with Chestnut-hooded Laughingthrush, Bornean Whistler and the engaging little Bornean Stubtail all joining the list.  Then we realized that a star bird was calling just down the road and spent twenty minutes stalking, and finally getting good views of an EVERETT'S THRUSH singing in the understory downhill from us.  Not a bad start.

We spent the rest of the morning working our way up and down the Power Station Road (and some of it's short side-trails) uphill of the Park HQ.  For such a short, and well travelled (and birded) road it was truly very productive with many life birds for me, including Blyth's Hawk-Eagle, Blyth's Shrike-Babbler, Bornean Treepie, Bornean Swiftlet, Bornean Whitling-Thrush and the very spiffy Bornean Green-Magpie.  Undoubted highlight on the way up though was a FRUITHUNTER, a bird I had not expected to see with only one day in habitat.  We heard one calling up on the slope above the road and were able to get close enough for views along a steep side-trail.  Another one of the key target birds joining the list not long after breakfast.

Bornean Green-Magpie

On the way back down the road things got even better.  First we bumped into a super cooperative WHITEHEAD'S BROADBILL sitting close to an apparent nest site.  This was perhaps the bird I most wanted to see in highland Borneo, a giant among the green broadbills and an electric-emerald jewell in the forest.

Whitehead's Broadbill

With the broadbill in the bag, the idea of seeing Whitehead's Trio came to mind and we quickly added a couple of female WHITEHEAD'S TROGONS to the list in the mirk of the forest.

Whitehead's Trogon in the darkness of the forest

Too soon though it was lunch time so the third member of the trio, the Whitehead's Spiderhunter, would have to wait.  Even lunch was good though, traditional Malaysian food with a couple of lifers seen from the restaurant terrace while we were eating.

In the afternoon we tried some new trails, and covered a lot of ground in the forest away from the road.  While we didn't get everything (how could we in one day?) we added a lot more species, and more lifers for me, including the freaky Bare-headed Laughingthrush.

Orange-backed Woodpecker and Bare-headed
Laughingthrush 

Sunday, April 8th - Crocker Range

With most, but not all, of the Kinabalu specialties in the bag, we decided to change plans and bird the Crocker Range on Sunday morning before heading back to the airport for my flight back to Singapore.  Recognizing that we couldn't get all the highland specialties in one weekend, we decided to focus on the one I most wanted, Whitehead's Spiderhunter.  While the plan was good, the target unfortunately eluded us ... we had Spectacled and Bornean Spiderhunters but no Whitehead's Trio for me.  There were a few more life birds though, so certainly not wasted time.  In all I ended up with 35 lifers in a day and a half.  Certainly a good use of a weekend.

Ochraceous Bulbul and Ashy Drongo

Tarsiers and Endemic Birds in Sulawesi

(Hopefully) The Second of Many Trips to Wallacea


Alfred Russell Wallace  was basically a Welshman, or at least was born in Wales so we are claiming him as ours despite his dodgy English/Scottish ancestry.  He's not all that famous today, but he essentially discovered "Evolution" (for which Charles Darwin pretty much stole the credit) and has a Biogeographic Region (Wallacea) and a "Line" (The Wallace Line) named after him.  The Wallace Line, which he drew, separates an Asian type fauna found in the Oriental Region (Mainland South East Asia, Java, Sumatra, Borneo, and Bali) from a more Australasian type fauna found in Wallacea (the Lesser Sundas, Sulawesi, the Moluccas, etc.).  One the one side, Apes and Tigers, on the other Cockatoos, Tarsiers, and Cuscuses.  It's not quite that simple, but I grew up utterly fascinated by his writings, travels and the evolutionary and geographical processes that shaped this part of the world, and many others.  He really is the father of Biogeography, and the Patron Saint of Island Biogeography (Read This Book if you haven't, the best book of Island Biogeography ever written) and I've been intrigued by it, and him, since I was a kid.

Only once (twice technically) before have I crossed the Wallace line - in 1996 I crossed from Bali to Lombok (and back) and went on to Sumbawa and Komodo on a Dragon-Quest.

So I've been itching to go back, and with a long weekend free, and already in Singapore, it sounded like the perfect opportunity to get back to Wallacea.  In this case, the magic island of Sulawesi (formerly Celebes) was the goal, and I had a scant four days there, so I was determined to make the most if it.


Thursday, April 27 - Manado to Batu Putih

Lots of flights from Singapore, via Jakarta to Manado, and when I emerged from the airport into a scrum of predatory taxi drivers .... there was no-one there to meet me ... O ... K...  I wonder sometimes if I'll drop into some remote place, with emailed plans to meet a local guide at some time and place, and not have them show up.  So far it hasn't happened, touch wood, and this time too turned out just fine when after a few minutes of fending-off money hungry-local cabbies, Esli Kakuahe, my local guide, popped up with a sign saying "Mr Anthony".  So off we went to Batu Putih, roughly a two hour drive through an island dominated by coconut palms and churches (this certainly isn't Muslim Java) to the Tangkoko Lodge and my destination, Tangkoko National Park.

Yellow-billed Malkoha and Silver-tipped Imperial Pigeon

We actually got to Batu Putih village with time to do some birding that afternoon and, after checking in at the lodge, we birded around town picking up some of my first Sulawesi endemics including Yellow-billed Malkoha, Isabelline Bush-hen, Yellow-sided and Gray-sided Flowerpeckers, and Purple-winged Roller.  We also went to the edge of the National Park, picking up Silver-tipped Imperial Pigeon, Sulawesi Hanging-Parrot and a couple of White-necked Mynas.  The highlight for me though was a Barred Buttonquail with three tiny black downy young that ran across the road in front of us then crouched in nice close view in the roadside vegetation.  Even though it's not a Sulawesi endemic, and not globally rare, I've always wanted to see a Buttonquail - I grew up with the mythical "Andalusian Hemipode" in my field guide, a mysterious bird, now extinct in Europe - so finally meeting one in the wild as an amazing experience.  I was still savoring it as I ate my fried fish and rice at the lodge, checked out the Sulawesi Scops-Owls that roosted outside the dining room, and tucked in for the night super-excited to bird the Tangkoko forest in the morning.

Sulawesi Scops-Owl

Friday, April 28 - Tangkoko National Park

Up early and off into the forest where we saw lots of very cool endemic birds and got savaged by many hundreds of tiny, ferocious, ankle-biting ants.  The forest itself was very open with not a lot of understory, which made getting around relatively easy (although stepping on the hundreds of two-inch-long fat, gray, millipedes that carpeted the forest floor was a little cringe-worthy, but there was simply no way to avoid squishing the odd one, not matter how carefully you walked), and the birds were relatively easy to find.  In no time at all, we'd racked up a bunch of target Sulawesi endemic birds like Bay Coucal, Black-billed Koel, Sulawesi Babbler, and Pale-blue Monarch.  Birds of prey were also lurking in the canopy, and we tracked down Spot-tailed Goshawk, Vinous-breasted Sparrowhawk and a very photogenic immature Sulawesi Hawk-Eagle who posed for us while  calling loudly through the forest, presumably hoping for a parent to drop by with food.

Sulawesi Hawk-Eagle

Sulawesi us also pretty much ground zero for Kingfishers and has a host of endemic species, five of which I hoped to see on this trip, and three of which we did in fact see that morning.  Lilac-cheeked Kingfisher is a beautiful, subtly colored creature that we saw along the entrance trail, while not far away a Green-backed Kingfisher lurked in deep shadows.  Finally, we also saw a Sulawesi Dwarf-Kingfisher after a long search of likely ravines and nesting areas.  All very nice birds, although the darkness of the forest meant that my photos of these gems were largely all terrible.

 The morning also produced two star mammals, the ultra-rare Sulawesi Crested-Macaque and the weirdly adorable SPECTRAL TARSIER.  I have always wanted to see a tarsier, and was shocked when Esli nonchalantly pointed to a gnarled fig tree and said "tarsier' before moving on to look for birds.  My response was a little more excited and I stopped to spend a little time with this crazy primitive little yoda-like primate.  Perhaps the coolest animal I've seen all year, and definitely the highlight of the Sulawesi trip for me.

Tangkoko is pretty much THE place to see the Sulawesi Crested-Macaque which occurs only here and on some nearby islands.  The population on mainland Sulawesi is tiny (3,000?) a result of persecution by farmers protecting their crops and locals hunting for bush-meat.  It is a very charismatic creature, most notably for it's odd black coloring (most macaques are a grayish brown color) and it's distinctive ape-like facial features.  They were also quite tame in the forest - perhaps unusual for a species that's still hunted - but at least here, close to the main trail, they allowed us to walk by them quite closely without paying us much mind.  A very cool primate, and I'm not usually all that fond of primates.....



After a siesta - simply too hot in the early afternoon - we returned to the forest and added yet more endemic birds.  Highlights in the afternoon included the majestic Knobbed Hornbill, Ashy Woodpecker, Sulawesi Mynah, and two 'hard to get' parrots, Azure-rumped Parrot, and Yellow-breasted Racquet-Tail.  Great day in the forest, and they even had beer at the dining room at the lodge!  Sulawesi is definitely not Java.

Knobbed Hornbill and Ashy Woodpecker

Saturday, April 29 - Tangkoko Overlook and Mangroves

Spent the day around the edges of the park picking up new things like the dapper White-faced Cuckoo-Dove, Sulawesi Cicadabird, Pygmy Hanging-Parrot, Golden-mantled Racquet-tail and the spiffy Black-naped Fruit-Dove.  A bit of time invested in the swiftlets overhead led me to conclude that there were three species - Sulawesi, Uniform and Glossy - present, well that was my best guess, I'm not very good at swiftlets.  Then as the day warmed up and thoughts turned to lunch, our target bird soared into view, another classy raptor the Sulawesi Serpent-Eagle.  A nice morning of birding along a road, and not a single ant-bite, although by now may ankles were itching like crazy and did so for the next five days.

White-faced Cuckoo-Dove and Sulawesi Serpent-Eagle

In the afternoon, we drove a little further to a mangroves area at a small river-mouth.  Out target here was another of the endemic kingfishers, the impressive Large-billed Kingfisher and it didn't take us long to find one.  We then basically just killed time, enjoying birds like Great-billed Heron and Rainbow Bee-eater until it got late enough to head back to the overlook to do some owling.

Large-billed Kingfisher

The weather in the evening unfortunately didn't cooperate for the owling, and light rain made it difficult to do very much, but we did manage to pull in a Minahassa Masked Owl.  We saw the owl several times in the lights, mostly flying over us, and we heard it call in response to the tape, but unfortunately the rain pretty much killed the chance of a photograph.  For me it as a bit deal though; after 40+ years of looking at birds, I finally saw a second member of the genus Tyto (yep, I'd only ever seen Barn Owl before that night so I was pretty excited to see a Masked Owl).

Monday, April 30 - Gunung Mahawu

The start of a very long trip home with flights from Manado > Jakarta > Singapore > Hong Kong > New York.  There was still time for a last stop though so we made our way over to Gunung Mahawu, hoping for another of the endemic kingfishers, Scaly-breasted Kingfisher.  We didn't have a lot of time at the reserve and unfortunately we never did find the kingfisher, but we did have a great selection of other endemic birds.  Sulawesi Woodpecker, the stunning Sulawesi Myzomela, Citrine Canary-Flycatcher, Island Flycatcher, and Sulawesi Blue-Flycatcher were all great additions to the list.  We did puzzle for a while over a strange, furtive bird in the leaf-litter which I later worked out was Chestnut-backed Bush-Warbler and we were gifted a visit from a Speckled Boobook that sat in the open and watched us right up until a split second before I got my camera focussed on it.

Island Flycatcher and Citrine Canary-Flycatcher

The stunning Sulawesi Myzomela

Too soon though time ran out and I had to head to the airport.  Sulawesi is a magical place and a short trip was no more than an amuse-bouche, priming me to come back for more.  I will absolutely be back there before too long.

Barred Rail at our pre-Airport lunch