Indonesie Trip 2017 Day 13

Indonesia Trip Day 13 - Thursday 3rd August 2017

Sulawesi with Mike Nelson from Bird Tour Asia.

The first part of our 6 week Indonesian trip was birding the island of Sulawesi. Today we were in northern Sulawesi. 

On the morning of Thursday 3rd August 2017 we left the Patra Jasa Hotel in Kotamobagu at 4.00 am again driving an hour and three-quarters to bird at Max's Trail at Tapakulingtang from 5.45 am to 11.00 am. As well as also birding on the roadside nearby.

It was a quiet morning of birding. The day always goes much more slowly when it's quiet. 

It was great to see the rare and endemic Short-crested Miner close to the road. 

At 11 am it had become really hot so we then drove half an hour for lunch and a rest in a local basic hotel, where we had rooms we could use. Today rather than sleep, I tried to catch up on writing blog posts.

We left the hotel at 3 pm for a half hour drive to go birding.

We birded back at Tarout again from 3.30 pm to 7 pm to try and see birds we had missed.

We also birded in an agricultural area outside the forest where we all picked up bad chiggers. They are the larvae of some spider species that leave really itchy bites.

We looked for birds we had missed the day before. We were back on the raft to get across the river and back which was fun. 

The afternoon had been really good birding, Moluccan Drongo-Cuckoo, Sulawesi Roller, Ornate Lorrikeet and Barred Buttonquail in fields behind.

When we got back to our cars, it was getting pretty dark. Our driver pointed into a tree showing me a bird. He made a movement with his head and arms indicating that the bird was asleep. It took me seconds to get onto the bird in the dimming light. I knew immediately that it was a large Cuckoo species.

I immediately called my Dad, Chris Craig, over and said "I've got a Cuckoo here". Dad couldn't see the bird so thought I was joking and didn't really look for it. 

We had been trying for Sulawesi Cuckoo (a large very shy Cuckoo) here at this site as Carlos, one of the Bird Tour Asia guides had stumbled across one here 2 weeks ago. Would I joke about a thing like this? Mum then appeared and immediately got onto the Cuckoo, saying "It's really big!" which made Dad realise that I was being serious. Suddenly, Dad got into my Cuckoo. "OMG, Sulawesi Cuckoo!". He shouted to get everyone onto the bird, but Tony was missing. 

We were all thinking the same, if Tony missed the bird, he would not be happy. In fact he would be gutted. So gutted that it might ruin his trip. Our happiness would also have to be dampened down in front of him.

At that moment Tony reappeared, Mike grabbed him and Dad got him onto the bird. We could now relax and enjoy watching the bird by torch light for a couple more minutes before it must have sensed the eyes on him and flew into the forest. Unfortunately nobody got more than a blurry record shot of this near-mythical bird.

What an amazing finish to the day.

Once into the car, our guide Mike Nelson, was texting his colleagues at Bird Tour Asia, telling them that he had gripped them off. What an amazing and rare bird. It turns out that the driver had been watching the bird for 20 minutes before we had returned. We didn't manage to see another one. 

We also looked for other birds we had missed the day before. We were back on the raft to get across the river and back which was fun. 

The best bird of the day was obviously the obviously Sulawesi Cuckoo. 

About the Author

Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig in Antarctica
Photograph copyright Young Birder Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig

Mya-Rose Craig is a 15-year-old young British Bangladeshi birder, naturalist, conservationist, environmentalist, activist, writer and speaker. She is based near Bristol and writes the successful Birdgirl Blog, with posts about birding and conservation from around the world. She loved seeing Mountain Gorillas in East Africa and Penguins in Antarctica over Christmas 2015, her 7th continent.

Mya-Rose was a Bristol European Green Capital Ambassador along with Kevin McCloud, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Tony Juniper, Simon King, Miranda Krestovnikoff and Shaun the Sheep! See the full list of Bristol Ambassadors. She has also been listed with the singer-songwriter George Ezra and actress Maisie Williams from Game of Thrones as one of Bristol's most influential young people. She is an Ambassador for World Shorebirds Day, See It Her Way and a Charter Champion for The Charter for Woods, Trees and People. She organised a conference, Race Equality in Nature, in June 2016 aiming to increase the ethnic diversity in nature and plans to run her third Camp Avalon camp in 2017. She has also set up Black2Nature with the aim of working with organisations to increase the access to nature of Black Asian Minority Ethnic people. Please connect with her on LinkedIn (Mya-Rose Birdgirl Craig) so that she can invite you to join the Race Equality in Nature LinkedIn Group and be part of the change. She has been awarded the Bath and West Show Environmental Youth Award 2017 for Bristol for her Black2Nature work EYA 2017. Please also like her Birdgirl Facebook Page and follow her on Birdgirl Twitter.

Indonesia Trip 2017 days 1 & 2 - 22 to 23 July 2017

Indonesia Trip Day 1 & 2

Saturday 22 July 2017 to Sunday 23 July 2017

My new binoculars and telescope arrived, on loan from Leica, just in time for our trip which was amazing.

Photography copyright Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig

I finished school early at 12.15 pm on Friday 31st July 2017 and went to Chew Valley Lake picnic site to have fish and chips (or just chips for me) at Salt and Malt with my mates. We then walked to a friends' house in Bishop Sutton before Mum picked us up and took us to do the car parking for Miles Leonard's Fifty Fest. Miles is the Chief Exec of Parlaphone Records and Warner Bros Records and owns our local pub, The Ring O' Bells. I did it with a group of friends as a favour as I still hadn't packed. It was 11pm before I got home, when I chucked my laptop, IPad, Kindle and phone into a bag with chargers and one novel, The Handmaiden's Tale which I'd borrowed from school and 2 revision guides, one for Biology and one for Latin. Lets just hope Mum has packed enough clothes for me! I've decided to go make-up and product free for our entire 6 week trip.

Ayesha arrived at Midnight, just as I was heading to bed. We were up again at 3 am, so that Ayesha could drive us to Bristol for our 4.30 am coach to London.

After checking in, breakfast and boarding our flight, we were almost in the Indonesia zone. After watching two films, I was flat out lying over two seats thanks to my Mum. Our plane sat on the runway for an hour and a half at Heathrow, making it unlikely that we would make our connecting flight at Kuala Lumpa (KL).

Birdigrl Mya-Rose Craig at Heathrow airport
Photography copyright Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig

When we arrived in KL, we had an hour until our next flight, so there wasn't much chance of getting onto that, and no chance of out bags getting on, we thought. But we were in luck, as we got off flight, our next flight was literally boarding at the gate next door and a lovely man told us that our bags were already on board.

It was a 3-4 hour flight from KL to Denpasar, Bali in Indonesia. Then we had a day of waiting for our next flight. The seats in the airport were uncomfortable, so Mum and I slept on the floor, with no shame, whilst we waited.

Birdigrl Mya-Rose Craig 
Photography copyright Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig

Mum went to buy water, but would only let me buy one bottle between all of us which she thought had cost £5.00. I told her that surely she had the decimal place in the wrong place because i doubted that Pringles could cost £16.00. But no, Mum is always right. Back talking to Dad, it turned out that the bottle had cost 50p not £5.00, but there was no time now to get any more drinks.

Our next flight was to Makassar, Sulawesi on the southern tip of the Island.

We were met by a local guide and driver at 7.00 pm and taken to our rather plush hotel which was next to the airport. After dumping our bags, we headed for dinner. Mike Nelson our Bird Tour Asia Guide came to greet us and catch up. 

Bird Tour Asia are the top bird tour company in Asia and have the most amazing owner guides, Rob Hutchinson and James Eaton. In 2014 we had birded Sabah in Borneo and a bit of Malaysia. Rob had been touring Borneo a week ahead of us and had been really generous with his up to date birding gen.

Myself and Mum had met Mike in Frasers' Hill briefly during that trip. Dad had been in West Papua and so Mum  and I had gone to Frasers' Hill on the Malaysian Peninsular. We bumped into Mike with Richard Schofield and his partner Di. We had met Richard in Colombia (a well known Tour Leader with Birdquest before retiring). It was funny because Di had immediately recognised me from the BBC4 programme "Twitchers: A Very British Obsession". We had been having a nightmare with a hopeless local guide and so Mike gave us some birding gen and tips.

Mike said that when he had agreed to guide us for the whole summer back in Jan 2015, he had remembered meeting me and Mum the previous summer.

There were 3 people joining us for the first part of our trip, which was Sulawesi and Halmahera. They were Nick and Claire and Tony. We had met them on the Isles of Scilly and also Dad had met them at the Amur Falcon twitch in Cornwall last week. Their flight was arriving at 11pm and so they were going to be exhausted when we meet at 4 am tomorrow morning, Monday 24 July 2017, for the start of our birding tour.

About the Author

Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig in Antarctica
Photograph copyright Young Birder Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig

Mya-Rose Craig is a 15-year-old young British Bangladeshi birder, naturalist, conservationist, environmentalist, activist, writer and speaker. She is based near Bristol and writes the successful Birdgirl Blog, with posts about birding and conservation from around the world. She loved seeing Mountain Gorillas in East Africa and Penguins in Antarctica over Christmas 2015, her 7th continent. She is looking forward to visiting Guatamala, Tanzania, Kenya and Madagasca birding in 2018 and hopes to see her 5000th bird species in the world.

Mya-Rose was a Bristol European Green Capital Ambassador along with Kevin McCloud, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Tony Juniper, Simon King, Miranda Krestovnikoff and Shaun the Sheep! See the full list of Bristol Ambassadors. She has also been listed with the singer-songwriter George Ezra and actress Maisie Williams from Game of Thrones as one of Bristol's most influential young people. She is an Ambassador for World Shorebirds Day, See It Her Way and a Charter Champion for The Charter for Woods, Trees and People. She has given over 50 talks. She has also appeared a number of times on TV and radio. She organised a conference, Race Equality in Nature, in June 2016 aiming to increase the ethnic diversity in nature and plans to run her fifth Camp Avalon camp in 2018. She has also set up Black2Nature with the aim of working with organisations to increase the access to nature of Black Asian Minority Ethnic people. Please connect with her on LinkedIn (Mya-Rose Birdgirl Craig) so that she can invite you to join the Race Equality in Nature LinkedIn Group and be part of the change. She has been awarded the Bath and West Show Environmental Youth Award 2017 for Bristol for her Black2Nature work EYA 2017. Please also like her Birdgirl Facebook Page and follow her on Birdgirl Twitter.