Early autumn migration on The Thames

I awoke to a nice bit of drizzle early this morning. I'd checked Rotherhithe yesterday, with the only real bird of note being a smart juvenile Yellow-legged Gull. Nothing to write home about when a few miles further east there'd been Razorbill and Guillemot amongst other goodies. So I decided to head out to Cross Ness, arriving just shy of 8am.

The drizzle had slightly abated, but almost as soon as I'd got out of my car and onto The Thames Path by Thamesmead golf centre, I heard the squawking of Sandwich Terns - 4 of them, all heading upriver and past the outfall. Nice start! 10 minutes later a group of 5 juveniles Black Terns came through too, in amongst a rain shower as you'd expect with this species. Then, to my surprise, a short while later a Goldeneye flew in and landed in amongst a small group of Teal; knowing that this wasn't exactly usual for the site I texted John Archer, and he was able to alert Ian Millar and Steve Carter who arrived and got some decent views before the bird flew off west in the direction of Barking Bay.

juvenile Black Tern - nice blodge on the foreflanks

Dark leading edge to the upperwing and obvious dark secondaries on underwing

concolourous rump and tail

quite advanced moult of mantle feathers

A showy juvenile Black Tern - easily the most confiding one I've ever seen at Cross Ness - gave me something to photograph despite the gloomy light. There was also a lone Little Egret, a couple of Common Sandpipers and during the course of the morning, I saw 5 Yellow-legged Gulls (3 adults and 2 juveniles). A quick walk to the paddocks produced a fresh juvenile Wheatear and 100s of Goldfinch. A nice morning's work!

Goldeneye - heading off towards Barking Bay

Cross Ness Seal - increasingly regular in The Thames

Sorry, but surfing is cooler than birding...

Quite a good looking bird, Pink-necked Green Pigeon. Yeah, exotic and I only put the photo onto Birdguides this afternoon and I've already had a couple of thumbs ups. Wow! That means people think it's good. People think the bird is cool and my photograph rocks. I'm on a crest of a wave. Admiration from fellow birders. Nice people saying that the fruits of my labour have been appreciated. Well, that's what a lot of people seem to want when they post their photos all over the web.

Pink-necked Green Pigeon - a cool photo of a cool bird?

While I've been away in Indonesia, the biggest annual birding event has taken place in a smeggy, stinky set of marquees in the middle of England. All birders and their sidekicks get dressed up for the day - in their khaki uniforms, wanting to blend in with nature and show off their latest Rohan or Country Innovation attire. When, essentially, there are no birds around there and all you need is your credit card and an unbelievable tolerance for sales bullsh*t. You could go there wearing those stupid Bermuda shorts that Timmy Mallet used to wear, and you'd still see just as many bloody birds. Not cool. The whole event really is unfortunately, let's be honest, not cool. Our tribe sucks.

Last week though, I visited Padang Padang beach on Bali's southern peninsula of Ulu Watu. Just the names sound cool don't they? Better than Rutland Water or Egleton anyway. These guys are really cool - and people who say they're not jealous of their tanned bodies, 'coolness' and pulling power are just bullsh*tting themselves. Surfing really is cooler than birding. What I admire is their sole purpose in life; they literally live to surf. They've shunned everyday conventions and live their dream.

I wanted to butt into their conversation and tell them that I use Magic Seaweed too. Tell them how cool birding is. But then, sensibly, I thought it best to keep my mouth shut. Birding really isn't, and never will be, cool!

Ask the macaque - is surfing cooler than birding? He thinks so.

Bedugal and back to the beach

Dawn over Lake Bratan looking from Bedugal

Today was a long day. Up at 4.30am and headed inland for an hour and a half to arrive at Bedugal Botanic Gardens just before sunrise. Lovely temperature, and the first time since Java that I've had to wear a 2nd layer on top of my t-shirt. A nice sunrise, with a view over Lake Bratan and the distant volcanic peak though the action started quickly.

Indonesian Honeyeater

Not 100% familiar with all the Asian sounds, I know a Barbet when I hear one - and though it took a bit of time to see, I did manage to get good views of a Flame-fronted Barbet early doors. Then there was some more quality, in the form of a Fulvous-chested Jungle Flycatcher that was just warming itself up in the morning gloom. A Little Pied Flycatcher was nearby while Short-tailed Starlings and Javan Grey-throated White-eyes were both fairly numerous. The Botanic Gardens were a beautiful place to walk around, and I pretty much had the whole place to myself from 6am until 8am, when a few workers etc started to arrive.

Dark-backed Imperial Pigeons were impressive, both in terms of their size and bellowing call. However, once I'd settled into the site and had my fill of the 'common' species at this altitude (Mountain Leaf Warblers and Blood-breasted Flowerpeckers were both easy here, despite not having seen them anywhere else), it was time to get grafting and go for a couple of specialities. The first one, Sunda Warbler, was found in some low scrub adjacent to a dried riverbed, busily feeding away and showing off its white eye ring on rather chestnut head. However, as I kind of thought before I set out, the last one would be a real struggle... Sunda Thrush. Typically a skulking Zoothera, I'd fortunately been given a fairly specific site within the gardens to search and, after some time of hearing leaf litter being flicked about, one revealed itself on the forest floor before bombing off never to be seen again! Excellent stuff.

Javan Pond Heron - a roadside bird in Bali

It was now 9.30am and activity was dying down a bit, so I travelled the short distance to the shores of Lake Bratan for a quick look. As usual with the type of habitat, loads of Javan Pond Herons flopping about as well as more unusually a nice Yellow Bittern that flushed from a small lakeside rice paddy.

Yellow Bittern

I took in a quick stop at Bedugal market on the way back. The fresh fruit and vegetables out here put the stuff we eat in the supermarkets back in the UK to shame. And predictably, it's a damn site cheaper too.

Back on the beach in Sanur for the afternoon, the first couple of birds that I saw were Lesser Frigatebirds; I knew that others had seen them here from trip reports, but these were the first of my trip so always nice to see. After having the usual Mie Goreng I walked to the southern extremity of the beach and found a stinking mangrove channel where, alongside the rabid dogs, I managed to find a Barred Buttonquail on the deck as well as a couple of Javan Plovers in the channel just as the tide was going out.

Lesser Frigatebird - note the white belly patch extending onto axillaries

Barred Buttonquail on the beach at Sanur

South Bali

I had a really enjoyable day yesterday, birding along South Bali as well as taking in some tourist stuff. I think Karen quickly rumbled that there was an ulterior motive as to why I was really enthusiastic about visiting the sea temple at Ulu Watu. And, within 10 minutes of admiring the clifftop view, there was a cracking White-tailed Tropicbird in view. In the end this majestic bird flew to eye level - much better views that I'd anticipated of a quality bird. Two birds were present and it was interesting to note an obvious golden wash to the mantle and uppertail of one of the birds in particular.

White-tailed Tropicbird

Padang Padang beach at Ulu Watu

No trip is complete though without the obligatory trip to a sewage works, and this wasn't an exception. However, believe it or not, Nusa Dua sewage works were probably the cleanest and least offensively smelling I'd been to. There were a fair few birds around too - many of which I'd not seen previously on my Balinese trip - with Wandering Whistling Duck, Little Pied and Little Cormorants, Blue-tailed Bee-eater and quite a lot of Sunda Teal the main draws. Herons floated about too, with Purple, Black-crowned Night and Striated along with loads of Great. Little and Cattle Egrets.

Little Pied and Little Cormorants sizing each other up

The final stop of the day was just across the causeway on Pulau Serangan. Hery, the senior ranger at Bali Barat, had guaranteed that if I visited this site then I'd see Great-billed Heron. He wasn't wrong, although they played hard ball with me - or much more than I'd envisaged. They were pretty skittish, though the turning tide may not have helped things. Nevertheless this site was packed full of quality birds with loads of Greater and Lesser Sand Plovers, Red-necked Stints, Terek Sandpipers roosting up while large numbers of both Little and Crested Terns were around. I also managed to flush up a roosting Savannah Nightjar in broad daylight. So all in all, another really enjoyable day.

Crested Tern

Bali Barat National Park

Aside from the Bali Starling, the northwest of Bali was a really enjoyable place to be. It was packed full of decent birds - with Javan Banded Pitta commonly calling in riverside forest for example. However, just for the wow factor and the colours you never see on a bird in the UK/WP, Rufous-backed Kingfisher stole the show for me in this habitat. And that's saying something as any bird finds it hard to top a Pitta!

Rufous-backed Kingfisher

Bumbrun, again within the confines of the national park, was stacked full of birds. From the start, a roosting Savannah Nightjar posed well in the early morning light and then, while looking for the endangered Black-winged Starling (which I managed to see), there were quite a few Java Sparrows buzzing around - this species is a common site unfortunately in captivity, and Bali is apparently the stronghold for this species compared to Java these days. Though the birds breed in dry scrub/monsoon forest, when they're not breeding they head to the rice fields where they can easily be mist netted.

Savannah Nightjar

Java Sparrow

Chestnut-headed Bee-eaters were actually quite common, and one posed really well while I was looking out into Gilimanuk Bay - nice to see some Beach Thick-knees again (three of them) as they were one of my favourite species when I was in Oz. Also visited some a site for Green Junglefowl and ended the day at Banyuwedang where I got some cracking views of Javan Plover as well as a couple of flighty Sunda Teal. Apparently this site will be long gone in the future - plans to build an airport in this unspoilt part of the island will open it up for more mass tourism...

Chestnut-headed Bee-eater

Green Junglefowl - looks good enough to eat?

Javan Plover

The only species I was keen to see that I didn't in northwest was Great-billed Heron. The tide was in at Bumbrun, where there's meant to be one that favours the mangroves. Then I drew a blank at Gilimanuk. Having dipped this species on the Daintree River in Queensland in 2003, hopefully I may finally put this species to rest tomorrow at Serangan... we'll see!

In search of Bali Starling

A couple of months ago, when planning the Bali stretch of this trip, there is only really one bird that you can say is synonymous with the island - Bali Starling, Rothschild's Myna or whatever you want to call that species that is so near extinction it's criminal that it has got to this stage. Bali is a big island, or at least it feels like it is, with the rather slow road network. These days, the Bali Starling is restricted to the extreme northwest of the island in the Bali Barat National Park. It's a 4 hour drive from the popular south and southeast coast that's frequented by tourists.

The 'real' Bali seems to still exist in this lovely corner of the world and, prior to my trip, I'd made contact with Hery Kusumanegara who is the senior ranger at Bali Barat National Park. A genuinely lovely guy, and with what seems extremely limited resources, tirelessly observes and tracks down the last few remaining Bali Starlings (unfortunately it seems as though it's down to 5 genuinely wild birds left now, at 3 locations within the national park). We got a boat from the jetty at Labuhan Lalang and headed the few km to Bumbrun, the site where Bali Starlings are reintroduced into the wild and where a couple of wild birds (told by their lack of rings) still exist.

one of four reintroduced Bali Starlings seen 'in the wild' on Bumbrun

There were four reintroduced birds – all ringed – showing rather well and typically vocal that were hanging around ‘in the wild’ around the release centre. However, there was no sign of the 1-2 wild, unringed Bali Starlings that still persist in the area. A real shame to have come all this way, to not see a genuinely wild Bali Starling. However, the habitat at Bumbrun is relatively dense coastal dry forest. I’d not known of anyone seeing this species away from this site in recent years either.

However, Hery suggested that we bust a move and head back to Labuhan Lalang as he thought we may have a better chance at another site. Just on the outskirts of Gilimanuk, in some pretty marginal habitat where cows were grazing, Hery had discovered a single Bali Starling some 5 months ago. Perhaps it’s a straggler from the nearby monsoon forest? Ever since, one of his volunteers has been helping out and making sure that this bird doesn’t become victim to another bird trapper. For obvious reasons, they try to keep a low profile with local residents while doing their duty.

Bali Starling habitat near Gilimanuk

Anyway, we got to the site and ditched our motorbike. We took a stroll in the midday sun but there was no sign. Hery’s mate arrived and we had a good look around – plenty of usual suspects such as White-shouldered Trillers, Collared Kingfishers and the like. But then, suddenly, appeared a white blob perched in a distant tree. Bins up, and there is was – a truly wild Bali Starling. Brilliant for me to see, but a bit of a double-edged sword; this lone individual being alone, without a mate, and one of only a handful of this species left that is presumably, within my lifetime, destined for extinction. Compared to the reintroduced birds on Bumbrun, this was a truly wild, skittish bird...

the real deal - one of only a handful of wild Bali Starlings left

Indonesia - the first few days

Quite a lot has gone on since the last post from Hong Kong. Flying into Surabaya a few days ago, the first thing to do was admire the active volcano that is Mount Bromo. It was excellent, with a decent sunrise, lovely secenery and some pretty sulphurous fumes... but given that a 2km exclusion zone was lifted only a few weeks ago (due to a recent eruption earlier this year), the ash made the area pretty birdless. Apart from a few swiftlets to give me a headache (probably Glossy Swiftlets)!

The journey from Surabaya was filled full of roadside egrets and Javan Pond Herons, though the highlight was a nice Javan Kingfisher - good to see it first on the island after it was named. A few other bits and bobs, with the obligatory Yellow-vented Bulbuls replaced at high altitude (around Bromo) by an Indonesian endemic, Orange-spotted Bulbul.

Scaly-breasted Munia

After just a couple of days on Java, which really didn't do the place justice, it was time to fly on to Denpasar on Bali where I'll be for a while now. After a slow start on the first day (having ditched down for the night in Ubud), I've now been in the northwest of the island for the last 2 days. Too much to write about just now, but privileged to have seen one of the few remaining wild Bali Starling (that was not from the reintroduction scheme) as well as Black-winged Starling, Javan Banded Pitta, Rufous-backed Kingfisher, Fulvous-chested Jungle Flycatcher, Javan Plover, Sunda Teal and a whole lot more.

That darn leaf... Javan Banded Pitta