Project Halmahera, the beneficiary of the 1994 British Birdwatching Fair, first drew my attention to this amazing place, which boasts some A-list endemic bird species in Wallace’s Standardwing, Ivory-breasted Pitta (Pitta maxima - the largest pitta in the world), Moluccan Owlet-Nightjar and Purple Dollarbird. It forms the majority of Birdlife International’s Endemic Bird Area no. #171, Northern Maluku and holds 38 endemic bird species, many being shared with smaller surrounding islands. The reason for this concentration of endemism is that it has all the factors necessary to encourage evolution – heat, lots of rain, mountains and being an island (separated from other land masses by deep water and not recently joined).

 

Halmahera has had a troubled recent history and has only recently returned to the list of safe places to visit, although it still carries a UK government travel warning. Between 1999 and 2001 around 5000 people were killed and 100,000 left their homes as refugees during ethnic violence. A fair account of the events can be found at http://www.serve.com/inside/edit69/northMaluku.htm

 

Our guide from Manado, Theo, told us about muslim jihadi fighters being shipped to Halmahera from Java, Ambon and neighbouring Ternate during the troubles to attack christian villages, as part of a drawn out tit-for-tat conflict in which both sides committed numerous atrocities. The local men would apparently stay behind to try and defend their homes while the women and children fled to the forest. Well-known local guide, Anu pointed out some of the inaccessible-looking hillsides where they had hidden. Happily the two communities are now trying to put the ‘crisis’, as they euphemistically call it, behind them and build a future living together, although a lot of fear still lies under the surface. For instance our muslim driver from Sidangoli was too scared to stay out after dark at Kali Batu Putih (KBP) and would instead return to pick us up later in the company of a friend. During our stay on Halmahera we found both communities friendly and welcoming, especially in predominantly muslim Sidangoli and in spite of the mural of Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein just a stone’s throw from our guest house!

Welcome to Sidangoli!

 

Halmahera has also seen considerable environmental carnage – Birdlife International’s excellent EBA book even features a tree being cut down with a chainsaw and it was clear from travelling through the devastated western part of Halmahera that it has experienced rampant recent logging. Desperately sad news this year is that even the famous Wallace’s Standardwing lekking tree at Labi Labi, on the northeastern limb of Halmahera, which featured in the peerless ‘Attenborough in Paradise’, has been cut down. This now means that the only known accessible lekking area is at KBP, about 3km from Anu’s homestead.

 The pulp mill at Sidangoli

 

We took a flight from Manado in Sulawesi to the mighty volcano island of Ternate, the gateway to Halmahera. The flight left only a little later than scheduled and our aircraft looked in good shape, which came as a nice surprise after the trip reports we had read beforehand. After rescuing our luggage from the scrum of under-employed airport porters we took a taxi to the port, about fifteen minutes away through the busy streets of the rather unattractive main city of the island. It was not easy for all five of us plus gear to fit into the vehicle so Juszti and I went on the back of motorbike taxis. Theo was great at arranging the taxis and boats and we cleared all of these potential stumbling blocks with ease. As well as being good company, he was excellent in arranging all our logistics. Nothing was too much trouble for him and he usually managed to get us a good deal. He is however only beginning to learn the birds and has now got a pair of binoculars as well as a copy of Birds of Wallacea but it was good to have him along purely in the capacity of a fixer/interpreter.

Ternate taxi (photo by Robert Vanyi) 

 

The speedboats which operate between Ternate and Sidangoli all looked like a Hoseasons ‘hand-me-downs’ that I would think twice about taking for a cruise on the Norfolk Broads. The fibreglass hull of the boat we chose had several obvious bodged repairs but it looked the best of the dodgy-looking bunch. Once the three large outboard motors on the back were running at full speed and the bow was up and skipping over the waves, we did not feel much like stopping to check any terns or veer off in the direction of some distant Frigatebirds. On the outbound crossing the sea was quite choppy and we saw a lot of Red-necked Phalaropes in flight (not so easy to identify from Grey with the naked eye from a fast-moving boat!) plus a dark-grey-backed tern, which looked good for Aleutian, although we didn’t stop for it as getting to Sidangoli as quickly as possible seemed like the best idea at the time with grey skies and rain ahead. It rained almost every day on Halmahera, usually in the afternoon – typical tropical weather.

Speedboat jetty on Ternate (photo by Robert Vanyi)

Robi, with Ternate in background  (photo by Tibor Juhasz)

 

We headed for KBP immediately after our arrival in Sidangoli, on 16 September, birding the famous logging road from the first bridge onwards. After some playback we managed quite good views of Ivory-breasted Pitta, characteristically calling from high in a tree on the edge of a dry river bed. Whilst waiting for the mega-pitta to show we saw a pair of Paradise Crows, presumably investigating what all the fuss was about. More interesting-looking than the plates in Birds of Wallacea would suggest although still in with a chance in the ‘dullest bird of paradise’ competition.

 

Next morning we headed to Lame at KM 33 on the road from Sidangoli to Tobelo, fully expecting to tick off Purple Dollarbird without any difficulty – a pair had been found there by Danes, Michael Trasborg and Aage Mikkelson and were twitched successfully by Nick Senior the previous week. Hours passed without a sniff and we spread out further, checking the thousands of suitable dead snags. Stu and I even followed the stream that runs under the road bridge at Lame all the way to a couple of impressive waterfalls without any luck, except for close views of a surprised Dusky Scrubfowl. We also saw Blue-and-White Kingfisher here, at the nest – a beehive-shaped mud construction on the side of a palm, with a round entrance hole just above centre. We headed north towards Tobelo feeling a bit deflated that our excellent recent run of success had come to an end, although hoping we would still score on the return journey to Sidangoli, or so we thought.

Blue-and-White Kingfisher (photo by Robert Vanyi) 

 

Tobelo is a dump. We checked in at the only half-decent hotel in town, a crumbling building, the downstairs rooms of which stank of urine but those on the first floor were OK. Being a Sunday most restaurants were closed and the only one we could find open was a fly-infested open-air affair, only a few metres from the noisy main road and full of exhaust fumes. I had my only stomach trouble of the whole trip next day although this did not develop to more than a couple of rushed trips to the toilet. After eating we headed off to a village along the coast near Galela in the hope of Moluccan Scrubfowl coming to lay their eggs on a volcanic black sand beach. In short we badly messed up here. Instead of letting the locals tramp up and down the beach with torches, which probably discouraged the Scrubfowl from landing, we later discovered we should have stayed on the beach and tried to find them ourselves with the naked eye and let them settle into excavating a nesting pit before spotlighting them. We waited from 1930 to 0300 before giving up as we were literally falling asleep on our feet. Unfortunately the locals who arranged the boat to the nesting beach had lied to us in saying that the Birdquest group had seen two birds the previous night. This encouraged us to stay longer than we would have done had we known the truth - they had not seen any. We left with only a Pacific Golden Plover spotlit in the dark and a lot of mosquito bites to show for our efforts, another gruelling exercise in disappointment to add to my catalogue of painful dips.

 

Back at KM33/Lame later in the morning we resumed our search for Purple Dollarbird but failed again. Foli is still the only reliable place to see Purple Dollarbird at the moment, as you will see from www.szimistyle.com. We decided not to go there on the strength of the recent sightings at Lame, however we later learned that Anu was incorrect in saying that the Birdquest group had also seen them, on the basis of which we tried for a third time. We spent a total of eight and a half hours looking for the Dollarbirds in the end but we did at least see some other good birds. The best of these by a clear margin was the tame Sombre Kingfisher, which sat in the same tree within 10m of the road for at least 5 days. Juszti found it after going ahead alone and he ran back at least one kilometre in the heat of midday to get us. Normally a shy lover of dark forest we were able to watch it at point blank range and got some good photos. Sombre Kingfisher doesn’t look or behave much like a Halcyon and has been poorly illustrated so far. Until now we had only seen rather poor record shots of this species. Again, the image below would not have been possible without fitting my 30D to Juszti’s beautiful f4 600mm Canon lens, at least he only had to carry it from the car this time!

Sombre Kingfisher

 

We had heard one at Kali Batu Putih earlier and I am pretty sure I glimpsed another on our first afternoon there but after Lame we decided that better views were unlikely, so we concentrated on other birds instead. The Lame Sombre Kingfisher was also successfully twitched by the Hungarian team of Husi (Tamas Zalai), Szimi (Szimuly Gyorgy) and Brad Pitt (Peter Borbat) and Szimi has some good photos showing its underparts on his szimistyle website. In fact it was still in the same place when Theo returned to Halmahera a month later. Stu also saw a Common Paradise Kingfisher but ultimately we did not find the Purple Dolly.

 

There is a lot of adverse comment about Anu on the internet and we were a little apprehensive about taking up his services. He is been said to be expensive at $50 per day but this seems a bit harsh given that he charges a flat rate and not per person. It was quite amusing when another Hungarian birder, Husi (Tamas Zalai) joined us for a day and it took Anu ages to notice there was someone new with us. We told him he was part of our group and had been to Foli for a few days and he said nothing more. I realise that $50 is a king’s ransom in these parts but he is still years behind the rates charged in Sulawesi and West Papua. Apart from a few porkies we found him to be fine. He let himself down by telling us that Birdquest had seen both Moluccan Scrubfowl near Galela and Purple Dollarbird at Lame a few days previously, although this may have been a misunderstanding. Another slight disappointment was that when it comes to vehicles 1M rupiahs seems to be the only figure that Anu knows and Theo found us a car and driver for the day for less than half this sum. On the plus side his new homestead allows excellent access to the forest and we saw both Moluccan Owlet-Nightjar and Moluccan Scops Owl in his garden. The three girls he lives with, his wife and her two sisters, made us some very nice food indeed in basic conditions. His place became something of a haven, within easy walking distance of the logging road and the girls demonstrated one million different ways to cook a banana as well as always having a flask of hot water ready for tea, a welcome sight.

A break from birding at Anu’s place (photo by Robert Vanyi)

 

The much-hoped-for Moluccan Owlet-Nightjar has a maniacal laughing call and was quite easily tracked down and spotlit, even with a mini-maglite (we had not expected to try for it that evening). It is not always straightforward though as the Husi team discovered, fluffing it a couple of days later, hearing the noise of its wingbeats as it made off into the forest before they had spotted it. Sulawesi Scops-Owl, is quite common in the area and has adopted a deep growling call, very similar to its larger endemic cousin, Moluccan Boobook. We tried four known areas for the latter at KBP without so much as a response.

Moluccan Owlet-Nightjar

 

The big morning of the Wallace’s Standardwing lek finally arrived on 19 September. After an early start from Sidangoli we reached the KBP logging road at 0330 to find Anu riding his motorbike in front of us. He didn’t stop and when we got to his homestead, he said he had been to visit a sick relative and was too tired to guide us and instead his wife took us to the Standardwing lek. This was absolutely fine by us as we knew we only had to be guided to the lekking trees and the Standardwings would do the rest. The 3km trail was quite steep in places but had no long drags uphill and quite a few downhill sections were a nice surprise. There are three stream crossings but we only needed to take our boots off for one of them. This can change after rain and the usually innocuous ankle-deep stream can rise to a dangerous thigh-deep torrent very quickly. It was very hot and sticky under the forest canopy and it is worth taking your shirt off for the walk. The lek itself was excellent, the birds started calling just before dawn from inside the canopy of two or three tall trees but as you stand on quite a steep slope to watch them they are not too far above eye level. There were up to five birds present at any one time and we saw a lot of wing fanning and standard-raising however no females visited and the calling petered out by around 0700. Another incredible experience though! Robi managed some photos in the half-light of the forest canopy.

Wallace’s Standardwing (photos by Robert Vanyi)                 Montane Forest at Kali Batu Putih 

Juszti and Mike at the Standardwing lek with Anu’s wife in the background (photo by Stuart Warren)   

                                               

Other notable birds seen at KBP during our stay included: the resident pair of Gurney’s Eagles (on two occasions, once near the pass and another time from the logging road, both in mid-afternoon, they apparently nest on the highest peak on the right as you approach the pass); Spotted Kestrel; Dusky Scrubfowl; Blue-capped & Grey-headed Fruit-Doves; Violet-necked Lory; White Cockatoo; Moluccan Hanging-Parrot; Goliath Coucal; Blue-and-white Kingfisher; Azure Kingfisher; Common Paradise Kingfisher; Moluccan Cuckoo-Shrike; Rufous-bellied Triller; Golden Bulbul; Dark-grey Flycatcher; Flame-breasted Flowerpecker & Cream-throated White-eye. There were also a lot of interesting dragonflies along the almost dry river beds at KBP and we also saw a large snake on the third bridge along the logging road, which slipped away quickly and evaded the camera lenses.

 

It was great meeting the Husi team later in Sidangoli. Hungarian birders now outnumbering Brits by 5 to 2 – the locals may never see so many Hungarians in the same place again in their lives! The Birdquest brochure describes Ternate as a crumbling backwater and Sidangoli is similar but even less attractive. Its muddy rubbish-strewn streets, scattered, burnt out and deserted homesteads are however brightened by the happy smiling inhabitants. The tiny bell-boy at our guest house was a really nice guy but he did try to gas me and Stu one night by filling our small room with an industrial strength insecticide. This was a complete waste of time as the mosquitoes were not bad here anyway. We both almost lost our voices for a couple of days after this.

140kg, 106kg & 40(?)kg – Szimi, Stu & the bell-boy               Quiet fishing village on the east coast

 

While opting out of a morning’s forest birding on the logging road at KBP, Szimi and Brad Pitt found a superb Beach Kingfisher behind the shanty town, which backs onto the foreshore at Sidangoli. Not much of a beach, next to a long drop toilet and washing line, but a very smart kingfisher! There were also several Grey-tailed Tattlers, a Pacific Golden Plover and a Striated Heron here. Next day we counted six Beach Kingfishers together on the edge of the mangroves from this point but the excursion downtown by one of them the previous day may have been a one-off.

Beach Kingfisher

Nice beach habitat at Sidangoli

Striated Heron (photo by Robert Vanyi)

Juszti at Sidangoli, with Ternate in the background

Whilst on Halmahera we met a surly Korean mining surveyor several times at KBP who said he was surveying the area for kaolin mining. He could hardly look us in the eye. Kali Batu Putih means ‘river of white stone’ in Indonesian and maybe this gave away its potential. Anu told us that the area to be mined stretched from the road almost to his new homestead. If this is true it will wipe out a large chunk of recovering secondary forest with birds such as Dusky Scrubfowl, Ivory-breasted Pitta and Sombre Kingfisher. The remaining forest at Kali Batu Putih did look really good and still harbours most of the endemics, although the parrots and Purple Dollarbird are getting harder and harder to find. A notable exception to this rule however was a wonderful flock of 13 Chattering Lories from a trail near the pass on our last morning there, adorning a tree like Christmas decorations. We also saw a Wallace’s Standardwing on this trail and it is apparently a regular site for this species. Best of all here though were the great views of Ivory-breasted Pitta, looking bigger than ever with its whole body pulsating as it called. I managed a couple of record shots.

Ivory-breasted Pitta

 

Typical limestone streambed Ivory-breasted Pitta habitat at Kali Batu Putih

 

On our final evening on Halmahera we tried one last time for Moluccan Boobook from the logging road and were instead offered an Ivory-breasted Pitta by some boys who were living in the forest there. It was in a pitiful state having been kept on a tether by them for three days. Theo persuaded them to release it without any cash changing hands and took it to Anu’s place hoping he would rehabilitate it. The bird couldn’t grip anything with the right claw of its foot, which had been tethered and it allowed us to pick it up again after we tried to release it. Close up it is a big bird!

 

Theo negotiates the release

Ivory-breasted Pitta

 

We also saw quite a few Chattering Lories tethered to perches on porches all over Halmahera. Apparently 250K rupiahs is the going rate (about GBP14). Depressing stuff, but plenty of opportunity to learn the call!

Chattering Lory

 

We did not see all the endemics, mainly because we were not trying for numbers but instead concentrating on the key experiences of Wallace’s Standardwings lekking, good views of Ivory-breasted Pitta, the two endemic Kingfishers – Sombre and Blue-and-White, Moluccan Owlet-Nightjar, Purple Dollarbird and Moluccan Scrubfowl. Sadly we screwed up the last two but the other highlights made these misses seem rather insignificant. The pigeons, fruit-doves and other endemic variations on a theme were somewhat lower down the order of priority, much to Stu’s frustration!

 

Another rainy day on Halmahera – Juszti, Mike and Stu at Lame (photo by Robert Vanyi) 

 

Next stop West Papua.

 

Mike Watson, Clitheroe, Lancashire