“What’s our time?” Logan asks moving along the rock paths that crisscross the roof of the CAS.

“Two minutes.” Ore, a graduate student, checks his stopwatch. It’s raining and cold and my second bird survey experience has been unexpectedly lucrative.

Half an hour earlier, winding our way through the halls of the research department, I was expecting 30 wet minutes of cloud spotting. Up on the roof in our yellow vests, the team, shielding our binoculars from the downpour, noted the temperature, weather, and wind direction. Logan was already looking around. ‘Can we start yet?’ his impatient hands said as he waited for Ore to set the timer. As soon as Ore gave the go ahead, Logan, a fourteen-year-old volunteer and bird expert, was leading us around the roof spewing names of bird species too fast for me to document.

We moved in a line, with Logan in the front shouting numbers, species, and the species codes of the birds he saw and heard. “It’s actually prime season for bird watching,” Logan explained to me later as he typed in the day’s data. “Lots of spring arrivals and the gulls haven’t left yet. Twenty one species, could have been twenty three if we hadn’t run out of time; good diversity.” He nods. Just seconds after the clock had run out, Logan had pointed straight up, shouting, “Oh man, that was a Mew Gull.” He shook his head, disappointed, and headed off the roof. Once the survey is over no additional birds can be added to the day’s data.

Ore has Logan name all the gulls; he knows the group particularly well. “Gulls, I love them.” Logan laughs and explains that they are a very over-looked group with a lot of rarities.

After a little over a year of conducting the Tuesday morning roof surveys, the CAS team is very familiar with the local birds. I was shocked to see two pairs of Red-tailed Hawks circling the area. Ore pointed to some tall pines, “Oh, that pair of Red-tailed Hawks nest in those trees over there.” The birds were behaving differently in the rain, a lot more vocally active and many were using the roof for shelter. As we made our way around the Dr. Seuss-like domes we heard three Downy Woodpeckers call.

Moe Flannery, the collections manager of the Ornithology and Mammalogy department, started the roof survey to learn which bird species were   utilizing the green roof. The data collected by the CAS team is posted on eBird, an international bird sighting website, used by birders around the world.

The survey has shown that the CAS building has, in many ways, been successfully integrated into the park environment and the green roof is a      huge part of that effort. The roof has provided important winter habitat for migrating birds resting and feeding. Last winter a flock of seventy plus  Kildeer made use of the green roof for at least three weeks. Kildeer need big open areas of vegetation and seemed quite content in Golden Gate   Park. Recently, the team spotted an Oregon Junco flying with nesting material, exciting evidence that the Juncos are back to nest on the roof for a third year. Oregon Juncos are ground nesters and the roof provides a safe haven from predators and people that also occupy the park.

In line with the mission of the CAS to explore, explain and protect, the survey team continues to monitor action on the roof, not just to share information about our local bird species, but also because of their commitment to improve the world we live in.

- Page McCargo

A couple Song Sparrows (Melospiza melodia) were skulking in the underbrush near Stow Lake.  They are difficult to see, but have a very distinctive pattern of banding on the chest which come to a spot in the center.

Here you can see the Song Sparrow’s streaking pattern very nicely.

And of course, the Dark-eyed Juncos (Junco hyemalis) are common around many footpaths.  This junco was in a group of 4-5 others and feeding on bread and bird feed scraps left on the ground by some earlier hikers.  The Song Sparrows were also with them, but the sparrows were more skiddish and more quickly jumped into the thicket behind them while I got these photos.

Several Ring-necked Ducks (Aythya collaris) have been hanging out in Lloyd Lake, near the 25th Avenue north entrance to the park.  Although the Mallards are still slightly more abundant, the Ring-neck Ducks have been common here this year with over 20 in the lake today.

The Hooded Mergansers (Lophodytes cucullatus) were my favorite sighting today.  They are always very spectacular (the male is above), and are great divers.  We often see a pair here on Lloyd Lake, and today there was one male and two females.  The male was pretty cheeky, and allowed us to get a pretty close look and some decent photos.  He aggressively chased two male Mallards away from a patch of weeds where he was diving, despite the fact that he was only a fraction of the Mallards’ size.

Here is a male Hooded Merganser swimming alongside a female.  They stayed closely together most of the time.

I was surprised by how few gulls I saw this morning.  Lloyd Lake is a great place to see Mew Gulls (Larus canus) this time of year, and we got great looks at several.  They are smaller than the Ring-billed or Western Gulls, and have almost no visible marking on the bill.

The much larger Western Gull (Larus occidentalis) was also present (although I took this photo on the Stow Lake boat dock).  These tend to be a little more aggressive than the Mew Gulls, and they respond quickly to the many people who bring bread to feed the ducks.

My wife Tiffany told me that there were Widgeon here too, and this is one of the reasons that we walked up to the lake.  Here is a male American Widgeon (Anas americana) in non-breeding plumage, with the obvious white forehead.  There were only about 3-4 pairs, but they too were relatively easy to see and came pretty close.

We looked for the Wood Ducks (Aix sponsa)  that we often see on the western side of the lake, but we failed to spot them today.  I still haven’t photographed them, and I was hoping to get a nice photo of their head pattern in the sun.  Instead, we saw a lone male Green-winged Teal (Anas crecca) sleeping with its bill tucked into its back feathers.

American Coots (Fulica americana) were common on all of the bodies of water in the park (as usual),

And we got great looks at Pied-billed Grebes (Podilymbus podiceps) on both Lloyd Lake and Stow Lake.

Last but not least (unless you are talking about size) were Anna’s Hummingbirds (Calypte anna).  We saw several out servicing the flowers.  I understand that the Academy is working on upcoming pollination exhibits which will most certainly feature hummingbirds.  Anna’s Hummingbird is a year-round resident that survives well on the parks many flowers, which provide a great source of nectar and pollen.

Another unphotographed highlight would have to be the California Quail (Callipepla californica) that we heard just north of Lloyd Lake.  As we approached the lake, we could hear some scraping in the underbrush, but I was unable to see what was in there.  I figured a junco, towhee, or even a squirrel, and walked on without working too hard to see it.  But later, when we were across the lake, we heard multiple clear “Chi-ca-go” calls of California Quail.  We walked back hoping to photograph one, but alas we were unable to see or even hear them again.  The quail are noteworthy, as I learned at a recent Golden Gate Audubon Conservation Committee Meeting, because California Quail were all but extirpated from the city limits.  There are believed to be only a single family group or “covey” that still lives around the Botanical Garden and Arboretum.  At first I suspected that this could be the same group that had just moved deeper into the park.  But as we walked toward the Academy, we heard another group of quail at the northeast end of Stow Lake – just across Martin Luther King Drive from the Arboretum.  I would still like to get a good look at the covey at Lloyd’s Lake, but it is tentatively great news to me that there may be another group settling there.

Why are the quail disappearing in the city?  It is believed that off-leash dogs are probably the major threat to ground-nesting birds in the city.  As the population rises and as people in the city want dogs for companionship, the impact on ground nesting birds is increasing.  Dogs are also a huge threat to shorebirds – especially the endangered Snowy Plover (Charadrius alexandrinus).  So please do your part and keep your dog on a leash unless you are in a designated off-leash area!

It was nice to get the camera out and shoot a few of the common local species.  In just a couple weeks, Gary Sharlow and I will be taking a group of photographers to Crissy Field to teach and practice some tricks for photographing birds in the field.  This will be a part of the adult programming that Gary has been developing, and a potential source of data and images for citizen science projects.

We recently spent a very successful 2-month field trip in the island province of Milne Bay, Papua New Guinea surveying birds and collecting samples to screen for various avian diseases.  We had an amazing crew – collaborator David Mindell, Post-doctoral researcher Jerome Fuchs, Berkeley PhD student Zachary Hanna, San Francisco State University Masters Student Molly Dodge, PNG National Museum researcher Bulisa Iova, and the amazing artist Isabella Kirkland.  We spent two months sailing on the SV Dalai, a French-build sloop owned and operated by Bruno and Carmen Montel.

This ship was an excellent way to get around, and the crew and field team were amazing.  We departed from Alotau, Milne Bay Province in September, and returned in November after sailing to Normanby Island, the Amphlet Group, Dawson Island, BudiBudi Atoll, Woodlark Island, Ginetu Island, Gawa Island, and the Trobriand Islands, just to name a few of the key islands.

We captured and sampled over 500 birds, including this Emerald Ground Dove (Chalcophaps indica), and the Collared Kingfisher (Halcyon chloris) below.

Although it may look like I’ve not blogged for a while, this is not so.  We were invited by the New York Times to blog in their very excellent series, Scientist At Work, and this link should direct you to most of our posts from the recent field trip:

http://scientistatwork.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/papua-new-guinea/

Feel free to post comments or questions here, and enjoy!

So we did a little asking around to find out whether anyone is using poison in Golden Gate Park, and the answer appears to be an emphatic, “no.” No one in the Academy is using poisons, not even around our precious collections spaces. In fact, the entire park is off limits to toxic herbicides, fungicides, and rodenticides. So we

spoke with our veterinary doctor in the Steinhart Aquarium, Freeland Dunker.

Freeland is very knowledgeable about animal diseases of all sorts, and almost immediately suspected raccoon roundworm, or Baylisascaris procyonis. This is a common roundworm found in a large percentage of raccoons (between 70-100% of west coast urban raccoons are infected with these worms!), and is very likely endemic to the huge population of raccoons in Golden Gate Park and nearby Sunset and Richmond neighborhoods. The worms normally live in raccoon intestinal tracts, and raccoons can shed thousands of eggs in their feces. The eggs are robust in the environment, and can live for a long time in the soil or in a raccoon latrine.

When other species ingest the eggs, the eggs hatch in their intestines and try to find a good place to settle. But since the larvae are not in a raccoon, they don’t find an acceptable place to settle, and they burrow through the intestinal walls and wander around inside the body looking for a place to settle. These wandering larvae cause a disease called larval migrans, or literally, migrating larvae. As these worms burrow through the body of the host, they leave a trail of destruction. Worms often migrate to the eye, brain, and meninges, causing encephalitis, neuroretinitis, central nervous system damage, and death. Our recent sick gopher was likely an advanced case, and probably had the worms in its brain and spinal column.

Baylisascaris larvae, which move through the body of its host leaving a trail of destruction and causing the disease condition known as “larval migrans.”

Although it is extremely rare, cases of Baylisascaris are known in humans. The CDC has a website that discusses Baylisascaris as a potential emerging human disease. Note that 4 of 11 known human cases were from California. All of the human cases were severe or fatal, and often most aggressive in young children. The damage done by migrating worms can be permanent, and neurological damage to the brain and eyes is usually the first sign of infection, and by then, it is usually too late to do anything but prevent additional damage.

Next time we find one of these gophers, we will try to confirm the diagnosis, and report back. Unless you’re a gopher, there’s really not much to worry about.  You can’t catch this directly from gophers, as they are not typical hosts and probably do not shed eggs (but you could catch it from eating gophers…) But it is worthwhile to keep an eye on your small kids and definitely don’t let them play near raccoon feces.

Recent work by Patty Parker (from University of Missouri) and her team of researchers has learned where the pox came from, where and when it was introduced, and some details about how it spread across the archipelago. In CSI style, they visited collections (especially ours here at California Academy of Sciences), and examined literally thousands of birds that have been collected over the last century and that are now held in public research collections.

Every bird in the collection has a label that includes information on where and when the bird was collected, and by whom. By looking for external pox lesions, they could get a rough estimate of which birds had pox, where and when.

(This photo shows pox lesions preserved in 100-year old specimens collected on the Galapagos during the 1899 Snodgrass and Heller Expedition and the 1905-06 California Academy of Sciences Expedition).

But they didn’t stop there – on birds with large lesions or multiple lesions, they used tiny scalpel blades and cut minute pieces off the lesions. These tissue samples were then used to confirm that the disease was actually pox. Two techniques were employed – first, they did histopathology studies (basically looking at the lesions under a microscope to confirm their external appearance as pox-like), and second, they extracted DNA and amplified and sequenced poxvirus DNA. Together, these two tests not only confirmed pox as the culprit, they actually identified the pox strain as being nearly identical to known strains of Canary Pox.

With this information on the pox strain as well as the information on where and when the pox lesions first showed up, they could unravel how and when the virus first came to the Galapagos. No specimens from 1891 and 1897 contained any pox-like lesions. found that samples collected prior to 1900 never showed pox lesions.

Canarypox virus (CNVP) is a form of avipoxvirus that attacks wild and captive passerine birds, and can cause significant mortality. It is double-stranded DNA virus in the family Poxviridae. Externally, it causes lesions on feet, head, bill, and around the eyes, and can impede sight, feeding, and movement. It can also affect respiratory and digestive tracts inhibiting breathing and digestion. Because the virus contains a double-stranded DNA molecule as genetic material, it is hardy enough to persist in the environment longer than many other viruses.

Check out their full research article at PLoS One

We saw our first sailing canoe tacking off Byron Island on our way to TubeTube Island. The boat was beautiful, and the sailors seemed at home on the water, but it was still far away and difficult to see how they were sailing.

On TubeTube Island, we saw our first sailing proa up close. The boat had several men who had been to Alotau, and were on their way back to their village with supplies purchased from town. While they were on shore resting, they peddled some beetle nut.

Bruno talked to the sailors, and they gave him a quick tour of the boat. They introduced us to the parts of the boat and showed us how they sailed it.

The boat had incredible detail in the bow and stern plates and nice carvings on the hull. The rigging used modern ropes and plastic for sails, but otherwise the structure followed the traditional local sailing rig.

Later, they loaded trade store goods on the boat, opened the sail and headed off.

Once they set sail, it was obvious that it takes tremendous knowledge and skill to rig these boats. Although it may look like these are cheap plastic tarps tacked together, the stitching and shaping of the sail are highly engineered for strength and performance. The sail is carefully shaped, and sewn to maintain proper sail shape. Ropes are sewn into the sail margins so that they can be lashed to spars and raised and lowered.

Here you can see some of the sewing and lashing on the foot of the sail. We had little time with these folks before they were on their way, but we were headed to the islands of Panapompom and Panaete, where boatbuilding was their main craft. These islands built and supplied most of the finest sailing boats used in this part of Milne Bay Province, and we were excited to see more of these boats in Panapompom.

On our way east toward Panapompom Island, we worked on the islands of Hummock and Haszard, and we anchored in their lagoon. Here we also encountered many sailors, including young boys who sailed smaller, single-boy versions of the larger sailing canoes.

Aladin went for a spin on some of these small canoes. Aladin has been building boats since he was a toddler, and so he exchanged notes with the local young sailors on design and technique.

The men and boys of Hummock Island also build and test scale models of their sailing canoes, as does Aladin. They worked together with models as well as larger sailing canoes. At times like these I wished that I wasn’t so busy with the biological research, and I wished that I had more time to learn and write about the local sailing knowledge.

As we pressed eastward, we saw more and more sailing canoes, some larger, some with many passengers, and some with slightly different designs.

We sailed to Panapompom in early November. Our main goal was, of course, to study the birds of the Deboyne Island Group, but we were all excited to be in the archipelago of the great sailing canoe architects and builders. The lagoon between Panapompom and Panaete is very shallow near Panaete – too shallow for Dalai, which has a 2.5 meter draft – so we anchored off the northeast side of Panapompom Island. This was an excellent decision for the birds, as Panapompom Island was higher and had more variation in habitats and geology, so there were many diverse birds. And we were close to Panaete – just a short sailing canoe ride away. While we studied birds, Bruno and Aladin studied canoe-building with some of the knowledgeable men, and they sailed to Panaete to meet some of the other builders. The photos that follow were taken by Bruno and Aladin during their sail to Panaete on a sailing canoe.

They sailed with Jimmy, one of our hired helpers, but also a master sail-stitcher and sailor. They raised and lowered the sail, and showed Bruno and Aladin how to use the steering board rudder at the stern to steer the canoe.

The water in the lagoon was crystal clear, so it was easy to see the coral and rocks under the surface. The sailing canoes had a shallow draft, so it was easy to avoid hazards, and they were able to move very quickly through the water.

Once on Panaete, they visited several boat builders and saw boats in the process of construction, such as this one that is nearly completed.

It is quite easy to see that these are not merely dugout canoes. The bottom of the hull is constructed of a dug-out tree trunk, and a particularly strong wood is chosen for this. Then side planking is added for extra buoyancy and to protect the boat in heavy seas, and internal reinforcements are needed to secure these parts to the bottom of the hull. In earlier times, all of the pieces would be carved to fit exactly and then lashed together with fiber ropes.

The outrigger is made of a heavy solid wood that can counterbalance the force of the wind on the sail. The canoe always tacks with the outrigger on the windward side of the boat. The decking is made of wooden saplings or bamboo, and can be made thick enough to support a lot of cargo or people, as needed. The mast rests at the bottom of the main hull and is supported off a large armature that spreads the force over the decking platform.

Although every part of the sailing canoe was functional in some way, some parts were elaborated decorated and embellished with carvings like this bow or stern plate. Bruno also worked with Jimmy and the boat builders to photograph and record the names of many of the ship’s parts. Like sailors anywhere in the world, the New Guineans had specialized names for every part of the boat.

Once back on Panapompom, on our last evening we tried to visit one of the boat builders living there who was famous for building small replicas of the large sailing canoes.

These little boats were only a few inches long, but they had every functional working part of the larger boats. We weren’t lucky enough to find the model-maker (he was out working in his fields) but we did get to see one of his small models.

Increasingly, these sailing canoes are being replaced by fiberglass boats with 40-50 horsepower engines, like this standard commuter boat. One can only wonder how many more years the traditional sailing canoes will be used. Throughout the Pacific, very few islands or island groups still use the traditional sailing canoes. The next time I come to these islands I would love to try to make a documentary film about these amazing seafaring people and try to record some of this knowledge before it is lost.

EVER SINCE I was an student working in PNG, I’ve dreamed of surveying and studying birds in the outer most remote islands of Papua New Guinea and the western Pacific. These places seem elusive – they are difficult to get to, poorly known, and only a few of the largest and most significant islands have been visited. Even those that have been studied were visited mostly long ago, by Albert Meek in the late 1800s and early 1900s, by the Whitney South Seas Expedition in the 1920′s and 1930′s, and by a few others, including Jared Diamond more recently. But there is much work yet to do, and much to be learned by working in these pristine places.

This fall, we are sailing with Bruno and Carmen Montel, on their beautiful yacht, Dalai, to begin working in the islands of Milne Bay Province, Papua New Guinea. We are surveying bird populations on a few islands in the major groups of the Louisiade Archipelago, and we are experimenting with traveling by sailboat. Sailing is a “green” way to get around – we are mostly powered by wind, using solar to recharge batteries, and using the boat as a “base camp” so that we have less impact on the islands we visit. It is also very practical, as fuel is expensive or impossible to get in these remote areas, and the boat provides a comfortable and safe base. By reducing our need for fossil fuels, we make it possible to be out in the remote areas for longer periods of time. One must remember that especially the low islands are threatened by global warming and sea level rise. Thus it is important to sample these islands while they are still here, but not to do so in a way that only hastens their demise.

Three of us from the California Academy of Sciences (Jack Dumbacher, Tiffany Bozic, and Peter Gibert), left for New Guinea in late September. We met with Bulisa Iova, Chief Technical Officer at the Papua New Guinea National Museum in Port Moresby in early October. We quickly obtained our research permits from the good folks at the Department of Environment and Conservation and at the National Research Institute in Port Moresby, and we were on our way to Alotau, the capital of Milne Bay Province. Once in Alotau, we provisioned, and we met with Bruno and Carmen and had our first tour of their ship, Dalai. It is a beautiful 54′ sailing boat that Bruno and Carmen built themselves by hand (and you can learn more about it here). Dalai is a luxury cruising sailboat, and they have been sailing it around the world for the last few years.

We boarded Dalai on 5 October, and sailed the next afternoon after we obtained the necessary permits from the provincial officials, and after we received excellent advice from Gretta at Napatana Lodge and David Mitchell from the local Conservation International office in Alotau.

We sailed first to WagaWaga, where we anchored for the night. We were up
the next morning early and under way for the Engineer Group, just east of
Basilaki Island. Our first port of call was the island of TubeTube
(pronounced Too-bay-too-bay), also known as Slade Island on the nautical charts.

When we first arrive at a new island, we are often greeted by locals who
help us find the best anchorage, and who offer fresh produce and other goods
for trade. Here is Bulisa talking with two guys in a local canoe who are
offering bananas and fresh greens. We rarely pass up the opportunity to get
fresh produce.

Next, we speak with the local officials ­- usually the councilmen or
landowners – to get permission to do our work on the islands. In many
places, including TubeTube Island, the whole village turned up for the
discussion, and everyone weighed in, asked questions, and taught us the
local names for the birds. This was really helpful and fun, and we made
lots of friends who not only helped with the survey work, but who traded
other items or services.

Many of the islanders kept caged birds like the Eastern Black-capped Lory and Pied Imperial Pigeon, and they encouraged us to sample DNA and RNA from their local captive birds as well.

Even after only a couple weeks, we are starting to see some interesting
patterns. Many bird species are rare or missing from the islands with
people, but are common on islands without people. These include the Varied
Honeyeater, Rufous Fantail, the Mangrove Golden Whistler, and the Louisiade
White-eye. Conversely, there are many bird species that are common on
islands without people, and are less common or missing on islands without
people ­ these include the Metallic Starling and Singing Starling. There
are many potential reasons for these differences, including that humans and
our livestock may be spreading introduced pests, including introduced
diseases. This is why we are sampling RNA and DNA: to look for viruses and
other diseases that may correlate with bird abundance and distribution.

There is another human impact that we see ubiquitously on all of the
islands. This is plastic waste. It is amazing how many shoe soles, plastic
bags, discarded lighters and other trash accumulate on even these remote
islands. Even if we spent a day gathering up and burning all of this waste
(and there would be A LOT!) within a couple days, the beach would be full
again. Nearly every village we visit has hammocks made of washed up fishing
nets, tokens made of large floating GPS locators for nets, even one had a
huge aluminum pontoon buoy. It is good that these are removed from the sea,
as they do untold damage to fish and marine mammal populations, and the
larger items could damage or sink a boat like ours if we rammed it while
underway.

We’ve also seen some really special things on some of these islands. These
include a cave with nesting Glossy Swiftlets, with the adults flying all
around us.

One of these caves also had some human bones and skulls in it. We felt a
little uncomfortable going to these caves, but the local people said that
this was not their burial place or the burial place of their ancestors, but
that these people were from “before” they lived there. Still, we only shot
a couple photos and left the place undisturbed.

Probably the largest bird nests in the world occur in PNG ­ these are the
nests of the megapodes. In this region, we find the Orange-footed Scrubfowl (Megapodius reinwardt), which is actually one of the smaller megapode species, but it still has a very large nest. Rather than incubate the eggs themselves, the males scrape up large masses of vegetation. As the vegetation rots, it heats up and
provides the necessary moisture and warmth for the incubating eggs. One nest can hold many eggs at any given time. Here is a photo of a scrubfowl nest from Skelton Island, with two men standing on top of the mound.

Here is a photo of a young scrubfowl that emerged from the nest
within the week. Check out those giant feet – ­when that bird is an adult,
they will be used for building these giant nests.

The local people in these islands still sail the traditional sailing canoes.
Young boys have small ones, and like bicycles in USA, the boys use them to
zoom around the vicinity of their island. The men have large ones that can
carry 20 or more people and their cargo, and they go very long distances.
We see them commonly, and as we travel west to east and further and further
from towns, the sailing canoes are more and more common. Here are a couple
beautiful sailing canoes that we passed while sailing from Watts Island to
Hammock Island.

We hope to see more of these, and we will be visiting Panapompom Island in the Deboyne Island Group, where the craft of making sailing canoes is very well developed and refined. The Deboyne Group produces many of the traditional sailing canoes for the region.

Sailing between islands can be challenging. Although we have some charts
for navigation, we cannot rely on them. There are some hazards that are not
clearly charted, and there is always potential that even those that are
shown are not accurately placed on the map.

So far, we have found the maps to be fairly reliable, but we use backups and are always on the lookout. In this photo, Aladin is sitting atop the spreaders looking for submerged reefs or other hazards.

Finding good anchorages is also tricky. With steady winds (usually between
15-30 knots out of the SE, we typically have to find good sheltered
anchorages to the NW in the lee of each island. Bruno and Carmen are expert
at getting us in and out of tricky anchorages, and they work seamlessly
together as a team.

In the end, the sailing is half the fun, and we see lots of wildlife along
the way, including seabirds and dolphins.

Today, 20 October 2009, we are back in Alotau, resupplying. We will also be picking up David Mindell, the last member of our team, who arrives in PNG later today and flies to Alotau tomorrow. We are hoping that he makes it safely and is not too jetlagged, as we have a long sail to do as soon as we pick him up, to head to Hammock and Hazard Island to continue our survey work.

By far, the most productive trip has been to Normanby Island, where we went to find one of the best local bird experts, Mombi Onasimbo, from Saidowai.

To get to Saidowai, one catches the Public Motor Vehicle (PMV), which is really just a truck refitted to carry passengers, sacks of potatoes, chickens, bananas, or whatever else you have to take to market or home. We got a seat near the front, so we had the best views, but we were also the first ones hit when the rain started falling. The PMV took us to East Cape – the easternmost point on mainland, Papua New Guinea. From here, we caught a 1-hour dingy ride to Sewa Bay on Normanby Island.

The dingy was about 20 feet long and equipped with a 60-hp outboard engine, and packed with about 15 passengers and their cargo. We got pelted with rain on the ride, but it kept us cool, and when Normanby Island emerged from the rain cloud, it floated above the deep blue water and glowed green in the sunlight. This was one of the most beautiful places I have ever been in my life.

Sewa bay is huge – much bigger than it looks on the map – and the protected harbor provides safety for yachts during storms, but was also home to several US battleships during WWII. Water is glassy smooth here…

These are seafaring people. Kids begin learning to paddle when they about two years old, and get their own canoe at about age five.

Kids as young as 7-8, like this little girl, have to paddle across the bay to school each morning. The larger canoes are rigged with sails, and folks navigate by stars. The older men can sail to any of the islands in the province using traditional techniques.

On our first day, we rowed a canoe up the river at the top of Sewa Bay to survey the mangrove birds, and this small boy joined us in his little canoe. He was the perfect birding partner – helping point out birds and keeping silent most of the time.

The birds here were amazing, and we got some excellent recordings of many of the common birds. One of the most interesting trips was to Dutchess Island, a small forested island just off the east coast Normanby.

It is especially unusual because nearly all of the bird species found on Dutchess were different from nearby Normanby, and most of the species we didn’t find elsewhere. So why are these species found here, on this tiny island? Why do they not occur on the larger island? How are island assemblages formed? And what controls which species occur on which islands? These are some of the key questions that intrigue us, and why we would like to survey this island chain. For the most part, only the larger islands have been surveyed, and the vast majority of islands have not been surveyed. We think that many of these smaller islands will hold some interesting surprises…

After that we traveled to several other spots on Normanby and around Sewa Bay. Sibonai was an interesting place where we got excellent bird recordings and saw the most species. This is also where Thane Pratt and Mike Moore worked in 2003 when they surveyed Normanby.

There is now a new village guest house in Sibonai, and the lodging was quite nice.

On our last day in Sewa Bay, we stayed again at Saidowai, and Mombi and I spent the day compiling our bird lists, going back through our 70 recordings, identifying birds, and updating our lists.

It also rained, so we took in some of the village sights and sounds, and we spent the afternoon making coconut cakes with our friends and hosts.

Here, one of the young boys is scraping the meat out of the coconuts for the dough.

And then they prepared the fire, composed mostly of coconut husks and empty shell – and all of these items burn very well.

The oven that we used was really just a large saucepan with fire both below it and on a large steel plate above. The scones cooked in just a few minutes and tasted excellent.

When we returned, we again rode the public dingy, packed with about 15-17 people and lots of cargo, and our gunwales were only a couple inches above the waterline. We had to move slow, and we caught a lot of salt spray on the long ride from Normanby to East Cape, but we had no serious troubles or bad weather.

It took a little longer to get back to town, as the truck overheated in the sun on the road, but it was nice to get out, stretch our legs,

And even take a little nap while the vehicle cooled off…

We spent a couple days on the south peninsula below Milne Bay, but it rained constantly and so we were not able to do much serious work or recording there. And now we are headed back to Port Moresby to take care of some official business, work on export permits (and permits for future work), and hopefully we will have time enough for a scouting trip to Manus Island…

Also around camp we had some interesting insects, including this longicorn beetle,

and this beautiful Christmas beetle.

On our second to last day, rain started falling by 6:00pm, and it rained hard all night. I woke to the sound of men yelling at 4:00am, and several of us got up to see what was going on. The river flooded, a drum of petrol had already washed downstream, and they were working to keep control of our zodiacs and other supplies that had formerly been on the beach. Water was literally lapping at the generator stand. So we tied off the boats, tied up the remaining barrels, and prepared a runway to haul the generator uphill. In the end, the water reached its peak around 5:00am, and we relaxed with a cup of coffee and watched the water drop.

But the flood did wash away our helipad and the beach remained underwater when it was time for our chopper to take us out. Luckily, the beach downstream was exposed enough to land on, so we ferried across and caught the chopper there, and headed to Moro on schedule.

Here is the entrance to Warofeni Cave, near Fogomai’u Village. The entrance is quite large, and a decent-sized stream flows out from the cave. You can see our local naturalist, Albert, standing on some breakdown just across the creek. When we arrived the water level was down low enough that we could wade in, and the water was just above our knees in the shallowest points for crossing. Then we could climb over the breakdown to move our way into the cave.

Once in the cave, there was a large pebbly bank that we could walk on, and on which we set up nets to catch bats and swifts. Over two days, we documented four species, and I took viral samples while Alanna took measurements, DNA samples, and recorded vocalizations.

We caught many small swiftlets exiting the cave at dawn, just as the bats were all returning. These appeared to be Collocalia vanikorensis, the Uniform Swiftlet in nearly every respect, however they had a single strip of feathers on the tarsus that is not supposed to be present in this species. We also collected a dozen or more huge Hippoboscid flies, or bat flies, that crawled around in the feathers of the birds. It was amazing how large these parasites were – they usually suck blood from their host, so one could only imagine how unpleasant these must have been for these tiny swifts. (Photo by Alanna Maltby)

On our second day, we ventured down a different side entrance to the cave that was packed with stalactites and stalagmites, soda straws, and flowstones. It led directly into the main shaft, but a significant distance upstream of the large opening shown in the previous photos. We also found very different species in this section of the cave, including the Rhinolophus species shown below and one small Vespertilionid bat. We hope to return and try to catch another of this rare little bat. (Photo by Alanna Maltby)

Although this Rhinolophus is also called a horse-shoe bat, it is in a different family than the Hipposideros bat that we found around camp. They are amazing fliers and echo-locaters, and we only found them in the deepest smallest shafts of the cave. We caught them by trying to hold nets up over a constriction in the passageway, and all but a couple of the bats managed to find small holes in the net to fly through or were able to squeeze through tiny gaps between the net and the cave wall. It was amazing how they could “see” the net so well using sound pulses and echolocation! (Photo by Alanna Maltby)

At the opposite end of the cave, we found a large emerald green pool that looked very deep, and the locals mentioned that there were many large species of fish that could be caught there. We hope to return with Phil Willink (our ichthyologist from the Field Museum in Chicago) to document which fish species are present here. Overall, our reconnaissance trip was very productive both biologically and photographically. The biological team is considering launching a larger expedition with entomologists, ichthyologists, and herpetologists and with full video camera support to document our work here. We hope that time will permit us to return.

Allen caught this green tree python near camp. These are striking species (pun intended) with bright green or yellow scales, spotted with white on the dorsal side. Note the row of large heat-sensing organs on the sides of the face below the eyes. They hunt for warm-blooded prey in trees, and typically constrict their catch. They are not venomous.

And these odd little caterpillars arrived in camp one day. We constantly have interesting animals and plants that the scientific team brings in, but there are often so many cameras in camp that it is difficult for me to squeeze in next to the professionals and get a shot. On this particular day, everyone was distracted by something else, and I had a spare moment with no birds to look after, so I took a few photos myself…