Halmahera 27th-31st October - Days 10-15
After leaving the hotel in Manado, 27th October was a travelling day. We flew from Manado in north Sulawesi to Ternate, a small island off the coast of Halmahera and took a speedboat to Sofifi on the west coast of Halmahera, arriving as the sun set. We then took a short drive to our accommodation for one night (Penginapan Cendrawasih).
On 28th we drove east for ~1 hour to "Roji's Place" in Binagara. Here there is a forest with trails and some very basic hides. This is a special site for two hard to find birds - Invisible Rail (which we did not see!) and Ivory-breasted Pitta. The latter is the world's largest pitta and is probably not uncommon on Halmahera, as we heard it every day - but today was the only day we actually saw it. We saw several other new species while birding the trails. Again, I took advantage of a prolonged siesta break to explore the area on my own and added a few more species to my list. In the afternoon we drove on for about 3 hours to our hotel at Subaim, where we stayed for 3 nights.
On 28th we drove east for ~1 hour to "Roji's Place" in Binagara. Here there is a forest with trails and some very basic hides. This is a special site for two hard to find birds - Invisible Rail (which we did not see!) and Ivory-breasted Pitta. The latter is the world's largest pitta and is probably not uncommon on Halmahera, as we heard it every day - but today was the only day we actually saw it. We saw several other new species while birding the trails. Again, I took advantage of a prolonged siesta break to explore the area on my own and added a few more species to my list. In the afternoon we drove on for about 3 hours to our hotel at Subaim, where we stayed for 3 nights.
On 29th October we had a 03:30 start to drive 2 hours to Foli. Here there is a lek for Wallace’s Standardwing, recently renamed as the Standardwing Bird-of-paradise, in a misguided act of woke to remove human names from the English names of birds. (More about Wallace later). This was billed as a highlight of the trip and was high on the list of my reasons for choosing the tour. In the event it was extremely disappointing. Expectations had been raised by its billing as a highlight and by the illustration of the bird on the cover of the field guide (shown below). However, in the dawn (pre-sunrise) gloom of the forest, although the birds were audible and parts of the birds could be glimpsed amongst the foliage, there were only a few brief views of whole birds and photographic opportunities were very limited. We continued birding in the area but didn’t see a great deal.
We returned to Subaim for lunch at the hotel and In the afternoon ascended the Uniuni Road to a high point to do some roadside birding. We did the same on much the same bit of the road for both the morning and afternoon sessions the next day (30th October) as well. This was the least enjoyable part of the tour. Although we did get to see some birds here most were distant views, there were times when the traffic on the road was moderately heavy and much of the birding was from a static position. There were a few short trails into the forest which at least provided some variation in the tedium.
On our return to the hotel for lunch I noticed a Bush-hen walking across the road. It saw us coming and decided to brain itself by flying into our car. I alerted our driver to this circumstance, he stopped the car, I went back and found the bird, performed a brief examination (nudged it with my foot), established that it was concussed but alive and apparently not seriously injured. We were all for placing it in the scrub at the side of the road to await recovery (or predation), but our driver who spoke no English (as we spoke no Indonesian) had other ideas. He picked it up and proceeded to drive the rest of the way back to the hotel with one hand holding the bird and the other on the steering wheel (most of the time anyway). The bird was placed in a box to regain its senses and we released it in the afternoon in a recovered state. This was our only sighting of Pale-vented Bush-hen. During the prolonged siesta time of the 30th October I went for a walk from the hotel and obtained some images of the local area – see the gallery below. |
The tour itinerary had us staying 4 nights at Hotel Barokah in Subaim, but thankfully Susan rearranged the 4th night. On 31st October we set of for Sidan Goli on the west coast of Halmahera. We stopped at at Mount Roni where we finally caught up with Sombre Kingfisher, that had been eluding us. Then we birded around Sidan Goli, particularly targeting Moustached Treeswift, before boarding a speedboat for our return to Ternate.
28th October: 33 species seen; 16 new for me
29th October: 34 species seen; 9 new for me
30th October: 37 species seen; 9 new for me
31st October: 41 species seen; 9 new for me
29th October: 34 species seen; 9 new for me
30th October: 37 species seen; 9 new for me
31st October: 41 species seen; 9 new for me