This is the first Blog Post detailing the best part of seven weeks I've spent zig-zagging across mainly Eastern Indonesia with two back to back tours with Bird Tour Asia (BTA) to the Banda Sea & the Moluccas, followed by a few days catching up with birds missed on my extensive travels around Indonesia back in 1991. The attached map is a schematic map of the islands visited. Note, I've not tried to locate the exact birding spots visited on the islands.
First some background. I visited in 1991 with my old travel buddy, Keith Turner, whilst we were on an extended round the world trip. We managed to go birding on thirteen of the biggest islands, plus an additional five islands in West Papua, over about three & a half months. The thirteen islands covered back in 1991, in date order were: Java, Bali, Sulawesi, Sumbawa, Sumba, Timor, Flores, Komodo, Sumatra, Ternate, Halmahera, Ambon & Seram. In West Papua, we also visited Sorong Airport Island, Batanga, Salawati, Sinapang, Biak, as well as, a number of mainland West Papua sites. We covered more ground on the three trips into Indonesia that year that most Birders who have visited Indonesia in recent years manage over several trips.
Back in 1991, there were significant challenges to Birding in Indonesia. Firstly, the only field guides were Mackinnon's Birds of Java & Bali, as well as, the Beehler's Birds of New Guinea. We were also carrying Ben King's Birds of South East Asia, the Pocket Guide to the Birds of Borneo & an Australian field guide, plus a few photos of Indonesian Parrots & Pigeons. Fortunately, there were the excellent BOU Checklists to the Birds of Sumatra & Wallacea which gave detailed lists of species for each of the islands, along with a lot of site information, but no pictures. While King's book & the Borneo guide were basic compared to modern field guides, we had spent several months in Malaysia, Borneo & Australia getting well acquainted with most of their species.
As for Bird Reports, we based the trip on three superb Bird Reports: Indonesia by Dave Gibbs; Indonesia by the late Mike Entwistle & Tim Andrews; Java, Bali & Sumatra by Pete Morris & Alan Lewis. The former two reports were the best as they had a number of sketches of some of the endemic Birds in Wallacea along with some ID notes. In those days, good reports provided lots of detail on how to get to sites, trails, and Birds seen. We also had a ninety minute tape of recordings from Dave. My job was to break all this information down into a detailed plan on where we needed to get to and for how long, so that Keith & I could figure out how to combine this with the vagaries of internal Garuda flights. We were able to buy air-passes for each of the three trips into Indonesia which gave unlimited flights for a fixed price. This was a more expensive way of travelling around the country than the others had used. But it save wasting a lot of time trying to get across an island or two over several days, just to get to the island we wanted to visit. Keith focused on figuring out enough Bahasa to ensure that once we left Java & Bali we had a chance of being able to organise transport, accommodation, food and where necessary, arrange permission to get into the forests. Between the two of us, the planning went very well.
Given the lack of field guides for most of our route, I took notes on everything new I saw & when I compared those descriptions to the new Birds of the Indonesian Archipelago field guide by Eaton et al, our identifications were surprisingly good, with few apparent ID errors. Albeit the taxonomy has changed significantly over the last thirty one years.
Three & a half months in Indonesia in 1991 had proven to be some of the tougher parts of our round the world trip, not helped by my picking up a nasty food poisoning bug in Sumatra, which returned twice more in Halmahera & West Papua, before it finally cleared up. But we saw some superb Birds & Birding sites, especially on Sulawesi & Halmahera. Also, being some of the first independent travellers to see Wilson's Bird of Paradise before the tour companies started visiting West Papua was very special. I still think this is one of my favourite all-time species that I've seen.
After all this time in Indonesia, I had thought it unlikely I would to return to Indonesia, except perhaps to make a return visit to Northern Sulawesi. But a few years ago, I was looking at the Bird Tour Asia (BTA) website & liked the look of their Banda Sea tour. This tour was based on a dive boat & would provide a more relaxing way to travel between a lot of ultra-remote islands in the Lesser Sundas part of Indonesia. It also promised to be a lot more comfortable way to travel though most of remote Indonesia and would bring the benefit of some better quality food. BTA had run this tour a number of times & clearly had a good knowledge on the islands they were visiting & the endemic Birds.
The recently published first edition of the Birds of the Indonesian Archipelago by Eaton et al (James Eaton is one of the two owners of BTA) got me interested in the Banda Sea tour. The problem was the next trips were all full, so I booked up for the Autumn 2020 tour, as soon as the dates were first announced in Jan 18.
I expected to have to pack up whatever contract I was working on in Autumn 2020 to be able to get the time for the Banda Sea tour. Consequently, I had another search of the BTA website and found I could combine this tour with the BTA 2020 Remote Moluccas tour which visited most of the Moluccan Islands, except for Halmahera. That wasn't a big problem as I had already seen most of the Halmahera endemics. The plan was looking good.
Clearly, that plan failed to happen thanks to C19. There was no option other than to defer both trips and hope that it would be safe to travel again one day. Finally, in Oct 22, the trip was about to happen, with the bonus of the even better second edition of the Birds of the Indonesian Archipelago. There were a number of changes to the original plan, but it was still viable. One of the problems was Indonesia were no longer issuing sixty day visas on arrival. But there was just enough time to fly from Bali after the Banda Sea tour, with a night in Kuala Lumpur, before flying back the next day to get a new thirty day visa. In the end, my main luggage spent one night longer in Indonesia that I did.
I flew with Malaysian Airlines from Heathrow on an 11:00 departure on 25 Oct. This arrived into Kuala Lumpur for breakfast on the following morning, with plenty of time for the early afternoon flight to Jakarta. After one broken plane & two changes of departure gates, Malaysian Airlines finally found a replacement plane to get me to Jakarta by early evening. Then it was just a painless short queue before immigration would give me a thirty day visa. There was additional complications of an app I had had to download to register my arrival (completed in the UK so I had the appropriate printed barcode for entry). The final hurdle was the Indonesian C19 app. I had uploaded copies of all my C19 certificates into it, only to find on arrival in Jakarta, it had locked and refused to work. Fortunately, there was a desk where I could show & register my UK certificates and armed with a piece of paper from that desk, I was finally in Indonesia.
BTA had booked me a room in the airport hotel at the nearby domestic terminal. I didn't seen any of the other group there. I quickly arranged an evening meal in lieu of the paid for breakfast & was soon getting about three hours kip. I was back up about 23:30 to find my Sydney mate Phil Hansbro and his pal Richard Carden, an ex-pat based in Singapore, just finishing a late dinner. We were soon joined by Rotterdam-based Arthur Geilvoet. Within a few minutes, our BTA leader Malaysian-based Wilbur Goh arrived and we were ready to head off to the airport for our overnight flight to Ambon. I knew sleep on this tour was likely to be limited in the first few days. The flight to Ambon in Eastern Indonesia went smoothly and it was already light by the time we arrived. Indonesia is so large that Eastern Indonesia is two hours ahead of Javan time.
It was a quick rush to the gate to get our connecting flight to Saumlaki, on the main island of Yamdena in the Tanimbar Islands. We said hello to Graham Tebb, an ex-pat living in Austria, who was on the flight & would be joining us the dive boat. He wasn't on the Tanimbar section of the tour, as he had already covered the islands.
After the best part of a couple of hours flight, we arrived at Saumlaki. Here were met the rest of the Australian-based members of the group: Tony Palliser, Peter & Robin Marsh and Kevin Stacey & Lizzie Dodds. That just left US-based Steve Kornfeld to arrive over the next few days. Finally, we also we met our charming Javan-based Birder and Mr Fix-it, Raja. Raja had just completed the first Banda Sea cruise with James Eaton and would be on our cruise, to sort all the local travel logistics, permissions etc, to ensure the smooth running of the tour. He was also a keen Birder and certainly helped to find a number of the good Birds along the way. An unexpected cameo appearance was made by James to say hello, to swap a few bits with Wilbur & to collect a replacement pair of boots that Wilbur had brought out for him, while Raja was holding James's plane to ensure it didn't depart.
A quick check & all our luggage had arrived safely. No mean feat given we had seen a fast plane change at Ambon. Once all the bags were in the three waiting cars, we had time for a quick look around the airfield. Despite the airplanes, some of the Eastern Indonesian airfields can be quite good Birding if the airport grass has been cut short. As the plane landed and taxied, we had seen ten Little Whimbrels and several Australian Pratincoles. First stop was a look along the field next to the terminal building. We quickly found another Little Whimbrel, along with a Masked Lapwing, a few Sharp-tailed Sandpipers & a Wood Sandpiper. Unfortunately, there was no sign of my only likely Tick: Oriental Plover, but there were a few more airfields to check before I left Indonesia.
I would have liked to have longer to look around the airfield, but we were told that access had been arranged to the nearby airfield lake to look for Spotted Whistling-ducks and our first Tanimbar endemics. We headed back to the cars as it was mid-morning & already very hot.