Introduction and Overview

On July 27th this year (2023) I left Seattle to join a Rockjumper birding trip to Sulawesi and Halmahera in Indonesia. Indonesia is a fascinating birding destination with more than 1800 bird species of which many hundred are endemic to its many islands (over 17,000 – mostly uninhabited) with many others “near endemic” meaning they can only be found in few other places. Different sources give different answers but between Sulawesi and Halmahera there are more than 400 species and over 110 endemics. It is prime territory for birders looking to add species to their World Life Lists. My appraisal of opportunities from the list provided by Rockjumper identified over 240 possible new lifers and many others that could be life photos. In addition to the numbers there was also great quality with numerous spectacular doves, pigeons, kingfishers, owls, parrots (and their kin), sunbirds, bee-eaters and others. Opportunity-wise, it was pretty exciting.

There were however some known challenges, hot and humid weather, many flights and long distances traveled, insects and leeches and some possibly less than perfect accommodations. Some hiccups arose as soon as I started to make airline reservations. Unfortunately, I used Expedia, which I will never do again, and the site just was not user friendly with many alternatives, multiple connections, different (and unknown) airlines and long layovers. There were also challenges related to time differences and the International Dateline. For many reasons including my own failure to check a final itinerary date after several entries back and forth on the site, I initially made a reservation for the wrong date. Later when I finally noticed it, there was a cancelation charge for which Expedia was of no help. Then later one of the airlines rescheduled a flight that I had booked (again through Expedia) which made my connection to get home impossible. Again despite 2.5 hours on the phone with Expedia, they were of no help and failed to find a substitute flight that would have worked for the connection. Finally, I gave up and said to just cancel the flight and refund my money which they said they would do. On my own I found a replacement flight within 10 minutes and rebooked. The refund has still not been credited. Also due to the flight schedules, I had to arrive two nights early in Makassar (the starting point on Sulawesi) and this led to some coordination problems. Mostly though, the travel challenges were just stressful.

Then a week before I was to depart, I suddenly could not hear anything with my right ear. This had happened before – accumulation of earwax blocking the canal. Unable to clear it myself, I fortunately was able to schedule an appointment with my doctor, but unfortunately the treatment did not work, and a second appointment was necessary two days before I was to depart. More stress. Thankfully that worked and I was good to go. My flights were an overnight flight from Seattle to Tokyo, a long layover and then another long flight to Jakarta with another long layover and then a short flight to Makassar where thankfully I was met by someone from the Rockjumper team and taken to the Dalton Hotel. I don’t sleep well on flights, so I was quite tired but relieved to be in place to begin the tour a day and a half later.

As an aside it is always interesting to see the products at shops in other countries – especially at airports and maybe especially in Japan. I could include many examples but am limiting it to a favorite – one of two large displays of Kit Kat products at the Haneda Airport outside Tokyo – I resisted.

Here is the overview birding summary of the trip: Total number of species “observed” – 248. There were 191 on Sulawesi, 68 on Halmahera, 9 on Java and 1 on Borneo (more on that later) – with some obvious overlap. Total number of new World Lifers – 189 (bringing my World list to 3228 species). Total number of photos – 121 species. New World Photos – 115 (bringing my World photo list to 1925). We had 110 endemics and another 9 near endemics. That covers the “quantity” of the observations, but unfortunately the “quality” of the observations left much to be desired – for me. Quite simply, way too many of the species observed were either seen poorly (even very poorly) or heard only and that is reflected in a photo percentage of less than 50%. And if I were to count only what I consider even “good” photos, it is less than half that percentage. Much of our birding was in thick forest/jungle where birds were distant, high up in trees and buried in foliage. We would often hear a bird and be able to identify it by call or song and even get it to respond to playback, but it would remain buried and not fly in closer to check out what was making its call as played back.

The emphasis on the tour was to “get” the endemic and specialty birds. I cannot fault that approach, but I learned that although I certainly was interested in numbers and rarities, poor views were just not satisfying, and I would gladly have traded good views of 10 species for poor views or heard only observations for 25. Just a mismatch of what I most enjoy and the possibilities at this place. I am not new to foreign travel for birds and my life list of 3200+ species is respectable at least in some circles (I am in the top 1000 on Ebird) but that number paled far behind those of the others on the tour who all had lists of over 5500 species accumulated over many years of travel to many places, often returning again and again to add to their lists. They were all excellent birders as well as good folks.

And the failure to get good looks was certainly not the fault of our guides. Forrest Rowland from Rockjumper was phenomenal. One of the best birders and guides I have encountered. He knew the birds, the songs, the calls, and the habitats and was really good at getting us on the birds – visible (or almost as invisible) as they were. Alin, our local guide, was also completely familiar with the birds and their calls and was an enormous help if somewhat soft-spoken and language challenged. Birding there is just tough – acknowledged by everyone I have spoken to who has been there.

An overview on non-birding aspects of the trip: Weather was actually a bit better than expected. There were hot days and humid days but never a really hot and really humid day together. We were often at enough altitude to cool off a bit, and we were often, even usually, in forest where the sun was somewhat blocked. Temperatures in the shade were 5 or 10 degrees lower than in the sun. We had very little wind and almost no rain. Accommodations with a single exception ranged from good to excellent. The exception was our nights at a pretty basic place near Lore Lindu which had no sink or tub or shower and a toilet that was “flushed” by our dumping in water that we scooped out of a big container in the bathroom. The same water and scoop were the means for “bathing” – dumping it over ourselves. But the beds were fine, the temperature ok and the rooms were clean. We were up and out early most mornings (before 5) with breakfasts in the field. Food ranged from just ok to pretty good although I got quite tired of overdone chicken, way too much rice and too many plain dishes. There were some great soups and other dishes (I really love the goreng noodles), and the breakfasts at a couple of places were pretty impressive. With only maybe two exceptions, there were no napkins or knives and never a washcloth. Everywhere, however, there were individually wrapped toothbrushes with tubes of toothpaste. Surprisingly there were very few bugs, and we had no leeches.

We had internal flights from or to Makassar, Palu, Manado, and Ternate (Halmahera) with an unscheduled stop on Borneo when there was no opening for us to land at Makassar. We were on the ground there for 20 minutes (allowing us to get our single Borneo species – a Pacific Swallow) and then took off again and landed at Makassar after all. The flight of course was very late and we missed our connection to Manado. Well not really as it turned out our connecting flight was on the same plane that had brought us there, so we just reboarded as it adjusted its departure time. In general flights in Indonesia seem to be on a “maybe” schedule – frequently late or even canceled. Somehow it all worked out. Which is a good place to recognize the excellent work done by the local firm in Indonesia that handled all the logistics, vehicles, reservations, flights, boats, lodging and food. Everything worked out well even when surprises arose.

More overview observations: Indonesia is a mix of Christian (Catholic) and Muslim populations that seem to get along well. I am not keen on any religions and have to admit that hearing the call to prayer booming through loudspeakers from the Mosques at 4:30 in the morning did nothing to positively change my views. There also seemed to be noisy motorbikes travelling the roads adjoining our lodgings at all times of the night – although nothing compared to the incredible number of them with anywhere from one to five people onboard that whizzed around the cities during the day. It looked like total chaos to us with few stop signs or traffic lights, mergers from every direction and a mix of trucks, cars (all SUV designed) and motorcycles on pretty narrow mostly two lane (barely two lanes?) roads. But it all worked, and we never saw an accident and for the most part, traffic kept moving. At first we wondered about how all the motorbikes (motorcycles) got their gas as we did not see many gas stations. We kept noticing little stands with bottles that we thought were filled with maybe some kind of local brew. Turns out they were bottles of gas and cars or motos would pull up and get a bottle or two and pour it into the tanks with a funnel. There were also some small stations with a single pump and a few with as many as a dozen pumps.

As is the case in most third world countries, there are hundreds of little enterprises, seemingly redundant. We saw many fruit, vegetable and fish stands and may Indo-marets – convenience stores. There were also many Apoteks – Apothecaries/pharmacies where even some antibiotics were available over the counter. In the convenience stores in addition to many beverages (Coca-Cola products and many others we had never heard of) there were many cookies, crackers, candies and especially chips – dozens of variations with flavors familiar and not. The currency in Indonesia is the rupiah with a current exchange rate of 15,000 rupiah to the dollar. This made for some interesting pricing and calculations. A Coca-Cola was generally priced at either 7,000 or 9,000 rupiah. A package of Oreos might be 12,000 rupiah. At first blush these big numbers seemed pretty high and then you realized that that means a Coke for 45 cents and Oreos for 80 cents. Chips were in larger packages than has become the norm in the U.S. and were less than a third of the price here. Street food was also pretty inexpensive. You could get pretty good noodles for two dollars or less. Another example of comparative economics: My room at the Dalton Hotel – very nice – was $30/night or $34 with breakfast. That breakfast would easily be $20+ at a US hotel.

Being an island nation, there of course is a lot of water and a lot of beaches. We were not at any of the beach areas and in fact saw nobody swimming and except at a couple of spots few boats out fishing. Scenery in my opinion was nice but not spectacular – lots of attractive forests, some mountains, rice paddies and palm trees, a few impressive mosques but otherwise no notable architecture. The Jakarta airport was impressive and busy, but the others were pretty basic. The people were wonderfully friendly when given the chance and the mix of dress was amazing with Muslim women always with head scarves, and often in full cover and Muslim men often were in flowing robes and others were sometimes in sarongs and batik shirts as well as casual western wear, lots of sandals and baseball caps as well as the “peci” the cap somewhat like a fez that was popularized by Sukarno worn by Muslim men.

Indonesia was “colonized” by the Portuguese and the Dutch (think Dutch East Indies) and some influence remains, but the country became independent on August 17, 1945. The country would be celebrating its Independence Day two days after our tour ended and throughout the country, we saw many banners and flags along the roads in red and white, the colors of the Indonesian flag. The numbers were amazing, and the organization required to get so many out in an orderly fashion was impressive.

The Birds

Rather than a day-by-day tale of places and birds, I am only going to include some of the birds for which I have decent photos and a separate section illustrating my frustration with good photos of some of the beautiful doves and pigeons taken from Ebird (with attributions) and my comparatively pathetic photos of the same.

There are many ways in which birders organize their pursuits and related trips – life lists for continents, hemispheres, countries, states, counties, patches and of course the world at large. One I had never heard of but which makes great sense is to see birds in each of the taxonomic families of which there are 249 including some that are monotypic (having only one species) as well as others that have hundreds of species. One of the participants in the group was closing in on seeing all of the families with a pre-tour trip to get the monotypic Pityriasidae family’s Bornean Bristlehead. For him among the most important birds on the trip was the Maleo – of another monotypic family “Macrocephalon”. This was one of the most frustrating observations on the trip for me. We had two Maleos perched somewhat in the open in a tree. I was able to get a decent digiscoped photo of part of the bird through the guides spotting scope. A few minutes later, I heard “the Maleo is in the open” and rushed to the viewing spot. Just as I got the camera focused on a great view of the full bird, one of the participants made a sudden movement and off it flew – no photo. It was great to get any view and any photo, but as I have said, I was hoping for some really good photos, and this was a major missed opportunity. I think after the trip, this birder had either 2 or 3 more families to go to complete his quest.

A group of birds that are special targets anywhere and definitely in Indonesia in general and Sulawesi and Halmahera for sure are the Kingfishers. On the tour, we had 11 species. I missed one entirely as it was found on a long hike on a tough trail (the norm) that I skipped. I did relatively better on photos with this group as they often perch in the open, but even so missed photos for three species. I include some favorites – all lifers.

Two of the most sought-after species on the trip were “thrushes” – the Geomalia and the Rusty-Backed Thrush. The Geomalia is a one-of-a-kind species that is endemic to Sulawesi and had been missed on some previous Rockjumper trips. It may be the only species in its genus. The aptly named Rusty-Backed Thrush was one of my favorites, again often missed and it took us a long time to find it foraging on the ground and being very cooperative.

Another group of birds that are generally among the favorites on any trip are parrots and related species. Although they are large and colorful, they can be difficult to see clearly and even more difficult to photograph as they are often high up in the trees and buried in foliage and they fly quickly overhead and disappear. We saw 15 species in this group, often quite distant or buried as indicated above. My photos are of mixed quality at best and for the ones not shown, either the photos are truly bad or there were no photos at all.

As was the case in Tanzania (and before that on other African trips) some of the most spectacular birds were the hornbills. We saw three species – Knobbed and Sulawesi Hornbills on Sulawesi and Blyth’s Hornbill on Halmahera. Somehow, I failed to get any photos of the latter – operator error as much as anything else although the views were of birds in flight only.

Birds that are always sought after in every trip are the owls. We did well finding 9 species and getting photos of many. (I missed one.) I am always amazed when birders can pinpoint the location of an owl in the dark. Unlike most of the species we sought, the owls were not only responsive to playback returning calls, but also in coming in close. A productive technique is to draw the owls in with playback and then look for eyeshine as you scour the trees with spotlights. Our guides were great at this.

Nightjars are another group of nighttime hunters. We had 4 nightjars. two of which were seen and photographed on day roosts. One, the Diabolical Nightjar (formerly the Satanic Nightjar) clearly had the best name of any of the birds we saw.

As with every other place I have birded, there were opportunities to see birds in or near the water – shorebirds, waders, waterfowl etc. Except that there were very few waterfowl, this was true in Indonesia as well and most of the non-lifer birds seen fell into this category. Thirty-seven of the species seen were in this group but only 14 were new lifers as I had seen many of the shorebirds and waders elsewhere as well as some of the terns and both frigatebirds. There were, however, some new species that I had hoped to see as I planned the trip. Two in particular were charadrius plovers bringing my total species for this group to 20. The closely related Malaysian and Javan Plovers were almost missed but I was the first to see them running on the sand and although we never got real close, I was happily able to get some decent photos.

Except with the rails, it is often easier to get photos of “water” birds as they are not up high in trees and buried in foliage. Here are photos of some of the other lifers (or life photos) from the trip.

As with birding everywhere, in addition to the larger and/or more charismatic species, there were many smaller birds that were seen, often in groups or small flocks and often frequently. Although they were at times in the open, or at least relatively so, photos were hard to come by as they were in constant movement and often backlit. Without identifying them as to place, the following are the better (not always saying a lot) photos of some of these species. All but the Pied Bushchat are lifers. It is a life photo of a species previously seen in Australia.

We saw two species of Woodswallows, Ivory Backed which was a lifer and White Breasted which I had seen but not photographed in Australia 20 years ago. The photo of the latter may be my favorite photo of the trip. Just wish others were as sharp.

Just a last batch of photos of various other species seen – all new lifers – except the Brahminy Kite, a life photo of another species seen in Australia 20 years ago. No order as to time or place or even type and definitely most leave a lot to be desired as to quality.

I acknowledge that by some measures, there are a lot of photos of different bird species in this blog – more than 80. But what is the measure? For me the measure would have to include the percentage of species seen and the percentage of good photos. There were so many species with photos left out either because they simply don’t exist or they exist but are truly dreadful. And that is the segue to a subject promised earlier – the incredible doves and pigeons that I expected to be colorful highlights to this trip – and just weren’t.

Doves and Pigeons – Great Photos (by others) of Magnificent Birds

On our tour I saw 27 dove or pigeon species of which 23 were lifers. Unfortunately I only was able to get photos of 50% of those lifers, a first statistic that shows why this trip was so disappointing. Worse, even of the photos I was able to get, many were marginal and only a couple did the beautiful birds any justice. These were the birds I was most looking forward to seeing in advance of the trip as many are spectacular multicolored gems. Although that is not apparent from most of my photos, I want to share this beauty with readers of this blog, so I am including 18 photos from Ebird – with attribution – to show how splendid they are and why I was so hopeful of seeing them and getting pictures.

The sad comparison is that these are the only decent photos of any of these species that I was able to get – and I am happy with maybe 4 of them. This NOT a complaint about the tour in anyway. In part it is a recognition of my own limitations as a bird spotter and certainly as a photographer. Moreso it is a recognition of what I enjoy and don’t enjoy about birding and what do to about it. Part of the first matter – spotting birds is hopefully at least partially related to an eye problem that I discovered on this trip as I tried to understand why I can’t spot birds better even with the great directions given by our guide. Turns out that the lens in my right eye received in cataract surgery a number of years ago is “clouded”. I can see but everything is blurred, and it is not a matter of correction as changing the diopter setting on the binoculars do not change it. And worse is that when looking through the binoculars, the right eye dominates and unless I close it, the whole view is blurred. Trying to use just one eye has its own issues including depth of field and width of the field of vision. I have an appointment with an ophthalmologist, and I hope it is remediable and that will make a difference. Improving photography skills is an ongoing challenge and I will keep trying.

BUT the real lesson from this trip is that I want birding trips in the future with different conditions more conducive to better views and photo ops even though that will mean foregoing “numbers” and some great birds. There are lots of great birds and birding places out there and with each passing year, the chances for me to travel to see them diminish. So choices have to be made. There will be lots of options for whatever trip opportunities remain ahead. Guess Borneo and the Lesser Sundas are out. The accommodations do not have to be fancy (although those African Lodges were certainly splendid), but feeders or blinds here and there would be nice. Maybe a washcloth or napkin as well.

Closing out this blog post, we did see some cool mammals, insects and reptiles on the trip. Most notable to me were the Celebes Crested Monkeys at Malino, Gliding lizards seen several places and especially the Tarsiers, tiny primates with large eyes and large fingers.

I had fretted most about the flights home at the end of the trip. The journey was from Manado at the north end of Sulawesi to Makassar at the south end of the island and then a flight to Jakarta with an overnight layover before an early flight to Narita Airport near Tokyo and then another long layover and then the long flight back to Seattle. My one bag was checked on through to Seattle – not my preference. After 48 hours without sleep the flight arrived in Seattle “before” it left Tokyo (due to crossing the International Dateline coming East). Fortunately, my bag arrived with me, and Cindy picked me up and it was then home to Edmonds. I was very glad to see her and very glad to be home. No explanation why, but somehow, I suffered no jet lag and fell into a fairly normal pattern of sleep. Two birding friends have been in the same area I visited and are returning soon. I look forward to their stories.