Independent West Papua, Sept-Oct 2017 (1 Viewer)

Hi all,

After finishing up 3 months in the Lesser Sundas, Sulawesi, and Moluccas, Melissa and I headed to West Papua for another 35ish days of Indonesian birding. Although two friends of ours, Stephan and Claudia, were suppsoed to meet up with us, they were severely delayed due to Hurricane Harvey. Therefore the first two days of birding Sorong and Raja Ampat, Melissa and I were on our own. For the rest of the trip, Stephan and Claudia joined as we visited the Arfaks, Nimbokrang, Biak, and the Snow Mountains.

Overall it was an extremely successful trip which some absolute megas including rarely seen Vogelkop Owlet-Nightjar, Gray-banded Munia, Snow Mountain Robin. In total we managed to track down 354 species.

The first part of the trip was to Raja Ampat and the area around Sorong. As usual, the absolutely highlight of Raja Ampat were displaying Red BOPS and fantastic views of a few Wilson BOP (no displaying though!). We also managed great looks at Western Crowned Pigeon, one of our main targets of the entire trip. The highlight of the Sorong area was the rarely seen Wallace's Fairywren, Black Lory, and ssp nigrocyaneus of Blue-black Kingfisher (a rarely encountered ssp that will soon be split).

Read more about our first few days in West Papua on the blog!

https://budgetbirders.com/2017/12/13/raja-ampat-west-papua-the-land-of-beautiful-islands/

Best,

Ross

I've just spent some time today reading the Snow Mountain Robin leg of your trip (coincidentally, before I even noticed this thread) - a great read and a real adventure. For some reason Snow Mountain Robin is one of the birds I would most want to see on a trip to WP - if I find myself at some point in the future stuck on that rock wall, I'll blame you

Edward said:

I've just spent some time today reading the Snow Mountain Robin leg of your trip (coincidentally, before I even noticed this thread) - a great read and a real adventure. For some reason Snow Mountain Robin is one of the birds I would most want to see on a trip to WP - if I find myself at some point in the future stuck on that rock wall, I'll blame you

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The hike for the robin is fantastic. Probably one of my favorite hikes I've ever done. But yes, that rock wall is definitely a bit sketchy!

Arfaks- The birding mecca of West Papua

After wrapping up our time in Sorong, we finally met up with Stephan and Claudia and headed to Manokwari to start the Arfaks section of our trip. Although birding West Papua can be extremely frustrating most of the time, the Arfaks still has to rank as one of the top birding areas in the world. We spent most of the time working with Zeth's brother, Eliakim, but also spent some time with Zeth when we visited a new camp that he is just starting to get established.

There were dozens of highlights from our visit, but some of the most special encounters included seeing a fantastic display of Vogelkop Superb BOP (check out my video at the end of the blog post), seeing Allied Owlet-Nightjar (this bird, found by Zeth about two weeks before our arrival is the first one that has been seen in over 10 years), and seeing Gray-banded Munias that just recently have become accessible due to new road construction.

Check out the blog for a full recap of our time in the Arfaks!

https://budgetbirders.com/2017/12/19/arfaks-west-papua-arrrfakkkk-white-people-walk-into-the-forest-and-money-comes-out/

Best,

Ross

Ross, that Superb BoP display is a cracker. Great video!

Cheers

Nimbokrang

Well after our time in the Arfaks we headed east to the lowlands of Nimbokrang for a few days. Although we prepared ourselves for some absolutely horrible birding (many reports allude to heat, mud, and many mosquitoes), we found the conditions not too unbearable. That being said, the birding was still very slow and birds were few and far between (although many good birds were still seen!). The biggest disappointment was our guide, Jamil. Past reports praise Jamil as being somewhat of a master, but it's fairly obvious that he's getting old (and possibly sick). He was definitely burned out and never wanted to spend any time out birding (and when he did come with us, he just wandered off and smoked). For the amount of money he chargers to stay at his place and guide (1,000,000 rupiah per person per day!), it definitely isn't worth it. Guides William and Dante work with Jamil, but have been thinking of going solo. Also, another guy Alex, used to guide for Jamil, but is now independent. I would highly recommend trying to get in contact with one of them as Jamil was just a huge pain to deal with. I literally had to argue for 30 minutes every day at lunch time to go back out birding instead of taking a 4 hour rest. Jamil would always just say that you couldn't find birds during the heat of the day, which was absolutely incorrect. Almost all of the flocks we did manage to find were between 1200-1400.

Anyways, Nimbokrang is far from the hotspot it once was. Additional destruction to the forest and continued hunting pressure of cassowary and crowned pigeons has made this area a bit lackluster. The good news is that there is still plenty of good lowland forest left in West Papua, but until someone takes the time to find a "new" birding spot, Nimbokrang will probably continue to be the default. If you do have some extra time, I'd highly recommend checking out some satellite imagery and finding some new lowland areas. I'm sure there's some really nice areas to be discovered. Anyways, sorry to sound a bit pessimistic about Nimbokrang, just trying to tell the truth!

Check out the blog to read more about our time in Nimbokrang. Although it was a bit of a disappointment, we still managed some amazing birds like Shovel-billed Kingfisher, Pale-billed Sicklebill, Blue Jewel-Babbler, and King BOP!

https://budgetbirders.com/2017/12/28/nimbokrang-west-papua-chasing-dinosaurs/

Best,

Ross

Biak: #5,000!

After our time in Nimbokrang, we headed back to Sentani and flew to the nearby island of Biak. Biak is known to have a few tricky birds and with only 2 1/2 days dedicated to the island, I was a bit anxious that we wouldn't be able to track them all down. Luckily, birding went a lot better than originally anticipated and a few bird that most people have issues with (Biak Monarch, scrubfowl, leaf-warbler) were all readily encountered and seen numerous times. The only birds we had major issues with were Biak Coucal (easy to hear, but tricky to see!), Biak Scops-Owl (mostly due to logistics and no one (well except me), including the driver, wanting to stay out too long) so only quick looks, and the local ssp of Dusky Myzomela that we just totally dipped (apparently the mangroves near the coast is a good place to check, didn't know that at the time).

The biggest hightlight of the visit was hitting #5,000 in the form of Biak Monarch!

Check out the blog

https://budgetbirders.com/2017/12/30/biak-west-papua-number-5000/

Ross

Snow Mountains for $500

Hi all,

Well after Biak, Melissa headed back to the USA for a short break and I headed to the Snow Mountains with Stephan and Claudia. Our goal was to do the Snow Mountains completely independently with only help for the local. This strategy ended up working out very well and we managed to completed a 9 day trip for only $500 a person!

I'm not going to get the blog post done anytime soon (Melissa usually writes the posts, and I just never got around to writing this one yet), but I did finish our trip report to the Snow Mountains which provides all the details.

Check it out on the blog

https://budgetbirders.files.wordpress.com/2017/12/snow-mountains_gallardy1.pdf

Best,

Ross