The crew had motored overnight so that we were off the island of Wetar: our base for the next three days. Wetar has a good selection of species that overlaps with the neighbouring & larger island of Timor, to its South. This includes the Indonesian West of the island and East Timor at the Eastern end.
We woke early for another well before dawn breakfast on the Lady Denok. One of the great things is the Lady Denok team were good at providing a substantial breakfast regardless of the start time. It helped given how early it was. After eating, we were quickly in the boats & heading to the shore. An open backed lorry arrived just after us in the village. We jumped in the back & were soon on our way up into the hills. It proved to be a slow journey as the lorry ended up going down into first gear on every hill: as the engine was knackered. It was the first of three slow drives across the island, as every lunchtime we returned back to the boat.
The first highlights were a couple of Timor Nightjars a few miles out of town on the road. One was giving its tok-tok-tok call, which didn't too dissimilar to what I remember of Large-tailed Nightjar. Perhaps it's call is more subtly distinctive as the Birds of the Indonesian Archipelago field guide states that while it was previously considered as conspecific with Large-tailed Nightjar, it has been proposed as a new species with a range of Timor & Wetar based up its distinct vocalisations. Perhaps not suprising as Mees's Nightjar, which occurs on Flores, Alor, Pantar & Sumba, was split from Large-tailed Nightjar about a decade ago by Clements & IOC. I think this is a case of the paper being written to formally propose the reasons for Timor Nightjar to be split.
After watching the Timor Nightjars on the road, we carried on slowly trundling up the hill. It quickly started to get lighter & the light was reasonable by the time we have reached our destination about halfway across the island. This was the first session of roadside Birding. Quite often roadside Birding isn't great as you end up having to keep moving to the edge of the road as traffic passes. But when that is only a couple of times an hour, it's wasn't that bad on this occasion. This morning was a good morning for seeing Pigeons & Doves.
In one of the roadside stops, I picked up two distant Eagles that were over a couple of miles away flying over the distant cliffs. Fortunately, they took pity on our inabilities to identify them at that range & glided over towards the cliffs on our side of the valley. They didn't pass that close, but they were close enough to allow us to confirm they were Bonelli's Eagles.
I will cover the other species seen on Wetar on the first day in the next Blog Post.