West New Britain August 8–13, 2018
WEST NEW BRITAIN AUGUST 8–13, 2018 New Britain Boobook (Dion Hobcroft) LEADER: DION HOBCROFT LIST COMPILED BY: DION HOBCROFT VICTOR EMANUEL NATURE TOURS, INC. 2525 WALLINGWOOD DRIVE, SUITE 1003 AUSTIN, TEXAS 78746 WWW.VENTBIRD.COM Our luck held for our third year to see the enigmatic Golden Masked Owl. (Dion Hobcroft) We had a very successful tour of West New Britain this year, seeing many of this New Guinean territory’s rarest and most elusive endemics. The fantastic staff at the Walindi Dive Resort made our stay very comfortable and relaxing, a perfect way to finish our birding in Papua New Guinea. Our arrival was perfect and, after settling in, we just birded the gardens of the resort, easing into our first endemics: Red-knobbed Imperial-Pigeon, New Britain Friarbird, Bismarck Crow, and lovely extended views of the Red-banded Flowerpecker. Noisy Eclectus Parrots, wing-whooshing Blyth’s Hornbills, and chattering flocks of Metallic Starlings added to the ambience, as did both Black and Olive-backed sunbirds. A few cold beverages while looking over the ocean of the Victor Emanuel Nature Tours 2 West New Britain, 2018 Gazelle Strait and well-fed, we were off to bed, ready for the first of several morning starts. A Spotted Whistling-Duck was a lucky sighting for us. (Dion Hobcroft) The first key birding destination we visited was the Garu Wildlife Management Area. New birds came thick and fast all morning ranging from Knob-billed Fruit- Dove, Pied Coucal, Blue-eyed Cockatoo, Melanesian Kingfisher, Purple-bellied Lory, and Ashy Myzomela. Two elusive birds we recorded were a perched Finsch’s Imperial-Pigeon and a frustrating Eastern Bronze Ground-Dove that called and called but gave only a few glimpses.
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