Tag Archives: birds

Birds of Halmahera

We had the great pleasure of travelling to the island of Halmahera (North Maluku, Indonesia) back in late March – early April this year. We only got to see a small part of this big island, spending the bulk of our time in the Aketajawe-Lolobata National Park. We certainly intend to go back and see more of this unique place.

Amongst other things, the island is famous for the profusion of birds and other wildlife, with many endemic species. Here are some of the birds we encountered during our visit.

Halmahera white-eye (Zosterops fuscifrons)
Invisible rail (Gallirallus wallacii)
Common paradise kingfisher (Tanysiptera galatea)
Blyth’s hornbill (Rhyticeros plicatus)
Wallace’s standardwing (Semioptera wallacii)
Ivory-breasted pitta (Pitta maxima)
North Moluccan pitta (Erythropitta rufiventris)
Moluccan imperial pigeon (Ducula perspicilata)
Paradise crow (Lycocorax pyrrhopterus)
Great cuckoo-dove (Reinwardtoena reinwardti)
Scarlet breasted fruitdove (Ptilinopus bernsteinii)
Moluccan monarch / Shining flycatcher (Myiagra galeata)
Variable dwarf-kingfisher (Ceyx lepidus)
Golden whistler (Pachycephala macrorhyncha)
Brahminy kite (Haliastur indus)
Black sunbird [male] (Leptocoma sericea)
Black sunbird [female] (Leptocoma sericea)
Moluccan scops owl (Otus magicus)
Halmahera goshawk (Tachyspiza henicogramma)
Goliath coucal (Centropus goliath)
Cattle egret (Bubulcus ibis)
Halmahera spangled drongo (Dicrurus atrocaeruleus)
Halmahera golden bulbul (Hypsipetes chloris)
Wallacean monarch (Symposiachrus trivirgatus)
Sahul sunbird (Cinnyris clementiae)

Red Hill late afternoon

One of the pleasures of living in this ‘Garden City’ is that, even though I live in an ‘inner suburb’, I can walk a hundred meters to the end of my street and be deep in eucalypt bushland. Red Hill is also home to hundreds of eastern grey kangaroos, white cockatoos, gang-gangs, crimson and eastern rosellas, snakes, lizards, fairy wrens,… you get the picture. Of course there are also blackberry bushes, St John’s Wort and foxes too, but it’s still a relatively intact example of the original native bushland (thanks in large part to the volunteer work done by the ‘Red Hill Regenerators’ group).

I get up there as often as I can, sometimes several times in a week, to enjoy the bush, the city views, and the exercise involved in climbing up to the trig tower at the top of the ridge. It also offers lots of photographic opportunities…

Here are some photos from my walk up there a few days ago. lovely in the late afternoon light. You can see the full set of pictures on the main Jokar web site by clicking on this link.

Sulphur-crested White Cockatoo (and the Moon)

Sulphur-crested White Cockatoo (and the Moon)

Red Hill view (oil paint filter)

Red Hill - view towards Civic

Mynah protects her nest from a magpie