July 11 – Day 15: Boat back to Kiunga

Continuing with the early starts it was a little more challenging by torchlight but we were soon tucking into a cooked breakfast. We piled into the boat and motored a short way down the river where we pulled up. 

Twelve-wired Bird-of-Paradise

Atop a tree on the opposite bank sat a male Twelve-wired BoP; it was calling continuously and was looked almost alien with its misshapen head and bizarre tail strands contrasting with its bright yellow body. It remained for about twenty minutes before quietly disappearing into the forest. Continuing on we saw some more Grey Crows and Southern Crowned Pigeons, the latter showing off their bad hair-dos.

Southern Crowned Pigeon

Azure Kingfisher

We walked around a different muddy forest trail and had scope views of both Little and Common Paradise Kingfishers. Back at camp there was a feeding flock of Double-eyed and Orange-breasted Fig-Parrots as well as a perched Doria’s Hawk. Lunch included fried spam for which Kwatu is famous for but there was plenty of choice for those that don’t care for such a delicacy, like various packets of cream-filled biscuits!

Doria's Hawk

We walked to another hide overlooking a bower but its creator, the Flame Bowerbird remained absent during our stay. Fortunately one flew over the river as we headed back to Kiunga on the boat although we really wanted better views of this spectacular orange bird. There were a couple of other new birds on the return journey with two Pacific Bazas and a Dwarf Fruit-Dove seen. 

A rather large dugout on the river

Arriving back at Kwatu, using the boat seats a a makeshift quay

It was nice to get back to civilisation in Kiunga where we could get clean and remove the layers of mud from our clothes and boots. We heard news of a tribal massacre in the Tari area in PNG which was where there’d been trouble last year and it’s remained out-of-bounds since.