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offshorebirder

Thanks for this Trip Report @Treepol.   

 

It is one of the few (only?) Safaritalk trip reports that have made me cross somewhere OFF my bucket list.   Which is just as valuable as the reports that put things on the bucket list...

 

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  • 1 month later...

@Treepol I got busy in September and it didn't lighten up till December by which time your TR dropped further down in the notification list. But your Big Year put me back on the right path and finally I get a chance to finish it and enjoy it thoroughly. Very distressing to hear about those headdresses, they've been using those for years but I was hoping they would use them less. 

 

well I thought I would be brave enough to follow in your footsteps, but leeches! and then snakes! 

so thank you for being brave and adventurous so that I can just live vicariously through your TR!

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@Treepol I must say that I admire your courage. I don't think that I could ever visit Papua New Guinea.

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@Treepol  Just come across your TR and I have enjoyed reading it so much. I was in PNG less than a year before you and your report brought back memories, intoduced me to places I didnt visit,  made me envious of shots you got that I didn't, (like the Brown-headed Paradise Kingfisher at Varirata), and just made me want to go again. Agreed, it's a difficult place and, yes, you definitely need to go with an experienced company because things really do go wrong and, if you don't have the right boots on the ground guides, you can be in serious trouble. It's the most difficult birding I have ever done! At times I really wondered what I was doing - this was supposed to be a holiday??!! There I was in the pouring rain, on a muddy track half way up a mountain with a hacking cough......... :blink: 

 

 Interesting to read about Kumul. Yes, the bird table is amazing but clearly my experience was very different from yours. It was freezing cold, no heating, no hot water (the water heater had exploded the day before we arrived and burned down one of the chalets) and the food was always stone cold. In October I was able to get great shots of mature male Astrapias at the bird table along with many other birds and this was the only redeeming feature of the place!

 

I also visited Kariwari on the Sepik river and Ambua Lodge in the highlands (Huli territory). I recognised some of the Huli Wigmen in your photos as we went to a local performance. From what I could gather, the BoP feathers in their headresses are kept for a very long time, so it's not as though they go out killing birds with any frequency. The headresses are family heirlooms and looked after accordingly. However, the only mammal we saw in the wild was a Muntjac (Barking) deer and that is because they have hunted them out of existence. Tim Flannery, as you mentioned, deals with this very well.

 

Thanks again, and despite all the tough aspects of the trip, I'd really like to do it again!

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  • 1 month later...

@Treepol what a classic TR. I feel for the poor baby Cassowary in the box.

The festival you went to would of been amazing - I loved the mudmen photo's. 

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