After an early morning look around the gardens & village edge of the village we landed at in West Babar, our transport arrived to take us a few miles away to some reasonable forest.
We had a ten to fifteen minute walk through cleared degraded ground with scrubby edges that had grown up again, before we reached the hillside forest.
After a few more minutes, we were in the forest. Our main target was the endemic Golden Whistler on Babar. The original widespread Golden Whistler was split into a number of species and subspecies a few years ago. Clearly, there is further work required in this group before the taxonomy becomes finalised. The Birds of the Indonesian Archipelago field guide proposes splitting Babar Whistler from Yellow-throated Golden Whistler, on the basis of extremely divergent mtDNA, a somewhat distinct female plumage and states further investigation is needed. Currently, Clements & IOC, regard Babar Whistler as one of the subspecies of Yellow-throated Golden Whistler, which occurs in the Moluccas & Banda Sea. We quickly saw the first Whistler soon after we entered the wood.
It was now late morning & we returned to the Lady Denok. When we got back, I finally hit the wall through lack of sleep over the last week of travelling out to Indonesia and all the early starts & after dark Birding. I missing lunch to catching up with a few hours of sleep and then decided to skip the afternoon Birding. While the others were returning to Babar, where fortunately, they didn't see anything new, I had the opportunity to catch up with Jimi the Dive Master on the Lady Denok. We had been told that there would be opportunities on the boat for snorkelling and PADI diving in some of the pristine reefs we were passing & I was keen to get back into PADI diving.
I have a PADI licence, but I hadn't been able to do any diving for the last 18 years. I am only really interested in diving opportunities in warm tropical seas where I can dive in shorts & t-shirt. Despite having good diving sites on my Purbeck doorstep, I've never fancied diving in the relatively cold UK waters with wet suits. I had asked Jimi for a refresher course before I went diving. There was one other experienced PADI diver on the boat, Steve, & he had enjoyed his first dive while the others were snorkelling after lunch & I was catching up with sleep. Once the refresher was complete, Jimi & I had the chance for my first dive since 2004. The dive went well given my rustiness & I saw a good selection of coral and fish. Best of all, was the Green Turtle that swam past: but unfortunately, didn't linger.
