....and here it is...
This post is dedicated to anyone who’s perservered with my rantings up to this point. We've been pottering around places with no internet for a while.
We thought we’d been pretty together buying a ticket for the Yaté bus in advance and getting down there nice and early on the Monday. When it didn’t show at 11.30 however, we were informed that there would be no bus that day or the next because a few hundred years ago some non-birders thought it was a good idea to storm the Bastille. After getting our money back, we trudged across town and took a local bus bound for the eastern suburb of Plum, getting off at the Casino supermarket on the road to Yaté. Immediately after posing for the hitching photo below, a car picked us up and took us all the way to Les Bois de Sud camp site, where we spent the night waiting for the Parc Rivière Bleue to open on the Tuesday.
Les Bois de Sud is an area of dry woodland and scrub to the east of Rivière Bleue, but its camp ground is situated in wet forest in a river valley. Here some great birds were readily seen in the immediate vicinity of our tent, which we pitched by the children’s play area. Here we saw 2
Red-crowned Parakeets (split from the NZ birds), our first charming
Yellow-bellied Robins, plus
White-bellied Goshawk, Red-throated Parrotfinch, New Caledonian Whistler, New Caledonian Friarbird, Barred Honeyeater, New Caledonian Myzomela, Southern Shrikebill, Streaked Fantail etc. Worth a visit perhaps if you arrive at Rivière Bleue to find it closed, which seems to happen if there might perhaps be a drop of rain forecast.
On Tuesday we ended up walking with all our stuff the 3.5km from the camp site to the Rivière Bleue HQ, where we were pleasantly surprised to be charged less than 3 quid each for 2 nights camping at Pont Germain, park entry, and the shuttle bus from Pont Perignon to Pont Germain. Don’t let anyone tell you this country’s expensive! At the HQ area we saw our first
Horned Parakeet. Nice.The park was extremely busy, as it was a holiday, but most of the cars were full and we ended up walking a couple of km before hitching a ride the remaining 7km to Pont Perignon, from where we watched
Whistling Kites and a shuttle bus took us the c11km to Pont Germain.
I was surprised how small this tiny picnic cum camping spot was. Camping here must involve only erecting a tent after 4pm and having it packed away by 8 in the morning each day. We were the only campers, and after the last shuttle went back at 4pm we had the park to ourselves and birds started to get more active. A
New Caledonian Cuckoo-Shrike appeared in the camp site, and we then went for a walk back along the road towards the Big Kauri Tree. This produced a couple more
NC Cuckoo-Shrikes, and
Melanesian Cuckoo-Shrikes, a few more
Horned Parakeets, several
NC Imperial Pigeons etc.
When we got back to the camping area we walked towards the tent, and Nicky suddenly froze in the same posture that she had adopted when the kiwi appeared for us on Stewart Island. It was 5.20pm 14 days 8 months and 1 year after we set off, and there in front of us were not one, but two gratifyingly peculiar, surprisingly blueish, and rather big-eyed and cute-looking
KAGU. We crept towards them and crouched by a tree, and they skirted the edge of the lawn eventually passing us within about 3m bless them. One was considerably brighter plumaged than the other, with richer-coloured bare parts, and this bird ended up chasing the other one around while adopting an upright posture with crest fully raised and wings opened enough to reveal barred outer primaries. They even ended up on one of the picnic benches while doing this. While feeding they’d move in stops and starts, adopting a horizontal posture when scuttling when they’d recall a bleached out Spur-winged Plover. When they stopped they’d stand more erect, resembling badly made plastic ornamental garden herons. They were just lovely.
Next morning the first bird I saw on opening the tent was a
Kagu, which ran into the forest when I emerged, and was presumably responsible for the ensuing lengthy cacophony that came from that direction. This was answered by a distant bird on the other side of the river and a slightly nearer one from back up the road. We never saw the birds at the camping area again, but did encounter one in the forest behind it, and 2 near the western end of the encouragingly named Sentier des Méliphages. These could easily have been the original birds.
The park leaflet mentions that Rivière Bleue has the greatest concentration of
Kagu, around 600 individuals, and if repeuplement means what I think it does, then I’d be very surprised if the birds we saw weren’t reintroductions. And the very best of luck to them. I was surprised to see how much evidence of feral pig activity there was, even here, including twice encountering pigs. I’d have thought they’d pose a threat to breeding success? At least there appears to be no immediate threat to what appears to be their optimum habitat preference, lawns and picnic tables.
So that’s it I guess for the Bristol to
Kagu part of the trip. In terms of getting to
Kagu and back to Bristol without flying, it’s already been a resounding failure. But at least we saw
Kagu and it would be churlish to sniff at the one or two incidental species we happened to accidentally bump into en route. Mustn’t grumble eh. We were frustratingly close to being able to get between Vanuatu and New Caledonia on the MV Havannah cargo ship, which does the trip monthly. The shipping company are sh#te with email contact, and also we’ve been frustrated all the way since Australia by onward plane tickets being required at immigration. What a crazy world.
I must apologise to anyone who might be thinking “at last the idiot is going to stop this stupid thread”, because after all, the trip’s not over till we’re back in Bristol, in the pub, trying not to think too hard about what on earth we’re going to do next in life. So tune in to the next thrilling episode of what has already happened next! Or go birding if you can be arsed.
1393
YELLOW-BELLIED ROBIN
1394
RED-CROWNED PARAKEET
1395
HORNED PARAKEET
1396
NEW-CALEDONIAN CUCKOO-SHRIKE
1397
KAGU
Pics: 1 hitch'n'twitch oldskool style
2 Kagu
3 3-legged Kagu
4 Red-throated Parrotfinch
5 Yellow-bellied Robin
