In the previous Blog Post, I covered the Pigeons & Doves that we saw on the first morning on Wetar. This Blog Post will cover the remaining species seen during the morning.
Based upon the Clements taxonomy that my Birding database still follows, there were only six Ticks for me on Wetar. Wetar shared a lot of species with Timor & while there are a good selection of species on Wetar, this low number is indicative that I had seen a large number of those species when I visited Timor, Flores & Sumba, during the 3.5 months I spent in Indonesia back in 1991. However, there are a number of splits that have been recognised by IOC or proposed by the Birds of the Indonesian Archipelago field guide that are likely to be split in the future.
There doesn't seem to be any disagreement on the taxonomy of the following species.
There was a good selection of Insects along the road.
It was time to head back to the Lady Denok for lunch. There was time for a roadside stop just outside of the village for a White-bellied Sea-eagle.
It was fair to say we were frustrated on the Lady Denok to hear the news that we were to be returning to Wetar soon after lunch. This wasn't to return immediately for Birding, but because we had to travel about 25 miles across the island to the town on the South coast which was the regional capital. Apparently, a new police chief had just arrived on the island & we had to take the passports & check in with him. It was an hour & a half journey on the back of the slow lorry with the knackered engine to get there, albeit about thirty minutes beyond where we stopped for Birding on the way back.
Once there, it was one of those pointless exercises where we all were ushered into the office to meet the police chief, some dreary talk about German football teams for ten minutes, before having to go out to the front steps for team photos with the police chief & his team. Basically, he just didn't seem to have a lot to do & it was the chance to have some photos taken with some of the few tourists who land on Wetar. Nobody asked to see the passports. All in all about an hour & a half wasted, when we could have been relaxing on the Lady Denok or spending more time Birding. Finally, we were told we could continue Birding for the rest of the three days on Wetar, but we would need a police escort.
After about a half hour of driving on the way back, we stopped at a flatter part of the road with more open area forest. The plan was to scan for Parrots, especially Olive-shouldered Parrot (also known as Jonquil Parrot), which we hadn't seen so far. This species also occurs on Timor & I had seen it on there in 1991. However, it is a different subspecies on Wetar & was a Tick for most of the group. We did see a distant Parrot perch up in the tree which some of the group thought was an Olive-shouldered Parrot, but not all of us were convinced & the views were inconclusive. A couple of Marigold Parakeets did put on a better show for us. The highlight for the site was our first Wetar Myzomela.
Finally, it was time to move as we had another half hour drive to where we were going to look for the recently split Wetar Scops Owl, which previously had been considered a distinctive subspecies of Moluccan Scops Owl.
It had been a long, but successful first day on Wetar, apart from the pointless journey to see the police chief.
