Birds of New Guinea

The newest edition of Birds of New Guinea by Thane K. Pratt, Bruce M. Beehler, Anderton, Szabolcs Kokay has been released Princeton Field Guides.
Birdwatchers and nature lovers who plan to visit West Papua and Papua New Guinea can now order this book from Amazon.

I hope that more visitors will be interested taking birding tour in this island.

Beach-Walking and Birdwatching at Amban Beach of Manokwari

Last week, I accompanied some of my friends who went surfing at Amban beach of Manokwari. We rode motorcycles to the beach. The surf spot was around 500 meters from where we parked our motorcycles. So, we had to walk for around 7 to 10 minutes to reach it. The view of the beach was beautiful. Some villagers were seen walking along the beach.

The swells were not too big when we arrived but still strong enough for beginning surfers at that time.I took some pictures of the scenery and also the surfers at sea. They were members of Abasi Surfing and some pilots from Susi Air.

Amban beach is a nice place for birdwatchers particularly for those who like doing beach walk and taking pictures of such sea birds as tern, frigate, swallow, and kingfishers. While I was sitting on the gray sand of the beach, I saw a bird flying over the sea towards a tree some one hundred meters from me. It perched on a branch of the tree. I immediately shot the bird several times using Nikon Coolpix P600. This camera was donated by SDSP Foundation to me and my friends for the pupose of promoting eco-tourism in Manokwari. We hope that this camera will be able to help us increase the intensity of our promotional works.
Back at home, I copied the picture of the bird into my laptop for editing works. I used Adobe Photoshop to resize, brighten it. Then I added some text caption on the picture. It was quite difficult to identify the bird. Finally, I came close to a conclusion that it was PERHAPS a Black Noddy (Anous minutus).

If you are interested in visiting Amban beach, you have to bring abottle of a STRONG anti insect repellent lotion. For further info about travelling in Manokwari, Sorong and other areas in West Papua, please, contact me by email to: peace4wp@gmail.com.