New Guinea & Australia 2019
Field Guides Tour Report New Guinea & Australia 2019 Oct 8, 2019 to Oct 26, 2019 Jay VanderGaast For our tour description, itinerary, past triplists, dates, fees, and more, please VISIT OUR TOUR PAGE. Nobody wants to miss seeing cassowary, but it was looking like we might until this one wandered onto the beach at Etty Bay and proceeded to forage unconcernedly down the whole length of the beach, accompanied by an entourage of admirers, our group included. What an amazing encounter! Photo by guide Jay VanderGaast. Australia and Papua New Guinea are a natural fit to pair up on a tour such as this. Aside from being close together, they share a similar avifauna, with a lot of families, and a fair number of species, occurring in both countries. On the other hand, they also each have their own distinct flavor, and plenty of endemics, making them both excellent destinations on their own. Quite obviously, no single tour to either country can even come close to cleaning up on the birds, and this tour certainly makes no attempt to do that. It is more a tour of highlights, and one thing is for certain, there were plenty of those everywhere we went! Things started off on a high note on our first outing in the Cairns region, where in addition to a nice list of expected species, we tallied a trio of Lovely Fairywrens at Cattana Wetlands and a gorgeous Little Kingfisher at Yorkey's Knob, and it just kept on rolling from there. A few days later, by the time we moved on to PNG, we'd enjoyed a close encounter with an imposing Southern Cassowary at Etty Bay, admired the brilliant colors of Wompoo and Rose-crowned Fruit-Doves, had an impromptu photos session with a stunning Spotted Harrier, and been introduced to an assortment of range-restricted specialties of the Atherton Tablelands, from quirky Chowchillas kicking leaves around in the understory, to the display of a shimmering male Victoria's Riflebird, to the construction prowess of a Golden Bowerbird.
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