While we were looking at the Waders at Tanimbar airfield, we had been told that there was a snag over access to the nearby airport lake. This was a site for Spotted Whistling-ducks: a species I was keen to look for given I had missed it on the 1991 Indonesian trip. Whatever the problem was, it had been resolved & we headed back to the cars to drive to the lake.
The lake turned out to be a large lake with a lot of dead tree trunks at one end, which had died when the lake had been flooded. Somebody had tried to make the larger open water part of the lake into a tourist attraction and build a lot of sheltered seats for families to meet up for the day. There were a few boats tied up that could be rowed on the lake. However, this all infrastructure looked very rundown and clearly it looked like it never got close to repaying the investment. But that rundown state was a benefit for the Birds as they would suffer less disturbance.
We quickly saw a flock of Whistling-ducks tucked away among the dead trees. Initially, we were disappointed to find they were the commoner Wandering Whistling-ducks. Finally, a longer scan found three Spotted Whistling-ducks on the far side of the lake.
Spotted Whistling-duck: Their range spans from the Southern Philippines, through Indonesian Wallacea to New Guinea & the Bismarck Archipelago
A quick look around the scrubby, degraded edge of the lake produced my first Tanimbar endemic: Tanimbar Triller. There were also short views of a few Banda Honeyeaters: which are a Banda Sea endemic.
Tanimbar Triller: Our first Tanimbar endemic
There are about twenty Tanimbar endemics on the Tanimbar islands. Taxonomy in Indonesia is likely to fluid over the next few years. The excellent Birds of the Indonesian Archipelago by Eaton et al has proposed a lot of potential splits in Indonesian species. Not very surprising given the islands have only really been studied for the last thirty or forty years beyond early expeditions and museum skins. The advent of DNA & sound recording studies, along with the authors and other ornithologists having the opportunity to travel to many of the more remote islands, has started to highlight there are many potential cryptic species in the country. A number of these proposed splits will have already been published and adopted by the latest IOC checklists, with some being accepted by the more conservative American-centric taxonomy followed by the Clements checklist, as maintained by Cornell University. For now I am still following an out of date 2019 Clements taxonomy, as I've not had time to convert my Birding database to the latest IOC taxonomy. When that finally happens, I expect many of the species I've seen on this Indonesian trip to become armchair ticks.
Five-coloured Munia: One of the nicer looking of the South East Asian Munias
Five-coloured Munia: This species occurs throughout the Lesser Sundas
Having seen the Spotted Whistling-ducks, Wilbur decided we should head off to the Beringin Dua Hotel, which was to be our base for the Tanimbar section of the Banda Sea cruise. The hotel provided to be a pleasant enough place with reasonable food. It was located on the bay's edge in Saumlaki. As the high tide dropped, it was clear that the water was very shallow with a few hundred metres of mudflats. Sadly, we didn't see many Waders on the mud. But it was high tide when we first saw the bay with a few distant Frigatebirds over the bay and one close Lesser Frigatebird.
The high tide view from the Beringin Dua Hotel
Lesser Frigatebird: This is one of three Frigatebirds that occurs in Indonesian waters: the other two Frigatebirds are Greater Frigatebird & Christmas Island Frigatebird, albeit the latter is rarely seen away from Western Indonesian waters
Lesser Frigatebird: The white axillaries are diagnostic for Lesser Frigatebird
An old ship slowly decaying in the bay
A traditional local fishing boat
We had time to unpack and catch up on an hour of lost sleep, before we headed out for our first afternoon Birding & some Owling.
