Maubisse: walking the road to Dili again
This morning I again caught a truck heading north towards Dili because the best forest was that way. As before I stopped at the Gleno junction and walked from there, although today I only covered the stretches of good broadleaf forest at this end and then caught another truck all the way down to Dare.
In contrast to the other day when I was here, this morning there were flocks of Olive-headed Lorikeets flying overhead as soon as I left the truck at the Gleno junction. There seemed to be a lot more birds in general in the first stretch of forest as well (between the Gleno and Manleuana junctions). I was about half an hour earlier than the previous day, but I think the extra birdiness was random chance rather than the time difference.
There were loads of Timor Blue Flycatchers about today. I wouldn’t say there were flocks of them, but certainly they were in “aggregations”, often with multiple birds together in single trees.
I got a glimpse of a flowerpecker with red on its chest which may have been a Timor Flowerpecker but I didn’t see the rump (the more common Red-chested Flowerpecker has a red rump and the endemic Timor Flowerpecker has a black rump, but both have red chests). I haven’t exactly had much success at finding the endemic birds I’ve been after on this trip!
In other non-conclusive possibly-endemic sightings, a large long-tailed bird flew through the trees which I think must have been a pigeon. Two of the endemic pigeons I’m still wanting to see have got long tails (the Timor Black Pigeon and the Timor Cuckoo-Dove). While failing to locate where it landed – I think it had just kept going somewhere down the hill – I instead saw a Tawny Grassbird which is not a forest bird but the other side of the road is open cultivation.
In the second stretch of forest a number of Plain Gerygones were seen (a bird usually just heard), a Wallacean Drongo, and a male Tenggara Whistler.
The Tenggara Whistlers on Timor used to be called Yellow-throated Whistlers (even though they have white throats) because they were treated as a subspecies (calliope) of the Yellow-throated Whistler Pachycephala macrorhyncha of the Moluccas. Recently it has been decided that the Timor subspecies actually belongs to the Rusty-breasted Whistler P. fulvotincta which is found from Java to Sumba, and because calliope is an older name than fulvotincta and has nomenclatural priority the Rusty-breasted Whistler has been renamed as the Tenggara Whistler P. calliope. Rather than gaining an armchair tick with this move I have instead lost a bird because I had already seen P. fulvotincta elsewhere in the Lesser Sundas but, never having been to the Moluccas, I now haven’t seen P. macrorhyncha.
I heard Timor Red-winged Parrots calling but didn’t see any today. There were still lots of Iris Lorikeets though and I even managed to get some better photos than the fuzzy one I took the last time.
I finally did manage some photos of a Timor Friarbird as well – it was very high in a tree but they didn’t turn out too badly when cropped.
When I had reached the end of the “good” forest I flagged down the next truck and rode it down to Dare. It was almost noon by this time so my first stop at Dare was the cafe where I ordered a Dare Pizza. Medium pizzas here are US$6 and large are US$12. The medium was the size of a dinner plate. The large must be gigantic. It was very good and I recommend having one at the Dare Cafe if anyone should happen to be visiting East Timor.
There were a few birds seen from the balcony of the cafe while waiting for the pizza, the most common being the Streak-breasted Honeyeater (Dare is the only place I saw this species). White-nest Swiftlets were the first seen in a while (they don’t seem to occur higher up around Maubisse where all the swiftlets were the Drab Swiftlets), and there were also other usual birds like Olive-headed Lorikeets and Sooty-headed Bulbuls.
Rua de Dare, the road which leads up the hill from the cafe, was dead. It was midday and stinking hot. I knew it would be like this, but it’s not much of an issue coming down here – however it really was pointless. The only birds seen here which I hadn’t seen earlier in the day were the White-nest Swiftlets, Streak-breasted Honeyeaters, a Helmeted Friarbird, and a Red-chested Flowerpecker.
There were 21 species of birds seen today:
Olive-headed Lorikeet, Iris Lorikeet, Drab Swiftlet, White-nest Swiftlet, Wallacean Cuckoo-Shrike, White-shouldered Triller, Sooty-headed Bulbul, Tawny Grassbird, Tenggara Whistler, Timor Blue Flycatcher, Pied Chat, Ashy-bellied White-eye, Red-chested Flowerpecker, Plain Gerygone, Streak-breasted Honeyeater, Yellow-eared Honeyeater, Black-chested Myzomela, Helmeted Friarbird, Timor Friarbird, Tree Sparrow, Wallacean Drongo.
This morning I again caught a truck heading north towards Dili because the best forest was that way. As before I stopped at the Gleno junction and walked from there, although today I only covered the stretches of good broadleaf forest at this end and then caught another truck all the way down to Dare.
In contrast to the other day when I was here, this morning there were flocks of Olive-headed Lorikeets flying overhead as soon as I left the truck at the Gleno junction. There seemed to be a lot more birds in general in the first stretch of forest as well (between the Gleno and Manleuana junctions). I was about half an hour earlier than the previous day, but I think the extra birdiness was random chance rather than the time difference.
There were loads of Timor Blue Flycatchers about today. I wouldn’t say there were flocks of them, but certainly they were in “aggregations”, often with multiple birds together in single trees.
I got a glimpse of a flowerpecker with red on its chest which may have been a Timor Flowerpecker but I didn’t see the rump (the more common Red-chested Flowerpecker has a red rump and the endemic Timor Flowerpecker has a black rump, but both have red chests). I haven’t exactly had much success at finding the endemic birds I’ve been after on this trip!
In other non-conclusive possibly-endemic sightings, a large long-tailed bird flew through the trees which I think must have been a pigeon. Two of the endemic pigeons I’m still wanting to see have got long tails (the Timor Black Pigeon and the Timor Cuckoo-Dove). While failing to locate where it landed – I think it had just kept going somewhere down the hill – I instead saw a Tawny Grassbird which is not a forest bird but the other side of the road is open cultivation.
In the second stretch of forest a number of Plain Gerygones were seen (a bird usually just heard), a Wallacean Drongo, and a male Tenggara Whistler.
The Tenggara Whistlers on Timor used to be called Yellow-throated Whistlers (even though they have white throats) because they were treated as a subspecies (calliope) of the Yellow-throated Whistler Pachycephala macrorhyncha of the Moluccas. Recently it has been decided that the Timor subspecies actually belongs to the Rusty-breasted Whistler P. fulvotincta which is found from Java to Sumba, and because calliope is an older name than fulvotincta and has nomenclatural priority the Rusty-breasted Whistler has been renamed as the Tenggara Whistler P. calliope. Rather than gaining an armchair tick with this move I have instead lost a bird because I had already seen P. fulvotincta elsewhere in the Lesser Sundas but, never having been to the Moluccas, I now haven’t seen P. macrorhyncha.
I heard Timor Red-winged Parrots calling but didn’t see any today. There were still lots of Iris Lorikeets though and I even managed to get some better photos than the fuzzy one I took the last time.
I finally did manage some photos of a Timor Friarbird as well – it was very high in a tree but they didn’t turn out too badly when cropped.
When I had reached the end of the “good” forest I flagged down the next truck and rode it down to Dare. It was almost noon by this time so my first stop at Dare was the cafe where I ordered a Dare Pizza. Medium pizzas here are US$6 and large are US$12. The medium was the size of a dinner plate. The large must be gigantic. It was very good and I recommend having one at the Dare Cafe if anyone should happen to be visiting East Timor.
There were a few birds seen from the balcony of the cafe while waiting for the pizza, the most common being the Streak-breasted Honeyeater (Dare is the only place I saw this species). White-nest Swiftlets were the first seen in a while (they don’t seem to occur higher up around Maubisse where all the swiftlets were the Drab Swiftlets), and there were also other usual birds like Olive-headed Lorikeets and Sooty-headed Bulbuls.
Rua de Dare, the road which leads up the hill from the cafe, was dead. It was midday and stinking hot. I knew it would be like this, but it’s not much of an issue coming down here – however it really was pointless. The only birds seen here which I hadn’t seen earlier in the day were the White-nest Swiftlets, Streak-breasted Honeyeaters, a Helmeted Friarbird, and a Red-chested Flowerpecker.
There were 21 species of birds seen today:
Olive-headed Lorikeet, Iris Lorikeet, Drab Swiftlet, White-nest Swiftlet, Wallacean Cuckoo-Shrike, White-shouldered Triller, Sooty-headed Bulbul, Tawny Grassbird, Tenggara Whistler, Timor Blue Flycatcher, Pied Chat, Ashy-bellied White-eye, Red-chested Flowerpecker, Plain Gerygone, Streak-breasted Honeyeater, Yellow-eared Honeyeater, Black-chested Myzomela, Helmeted Friarbird, Timor Friarbird, Tree Sparrow, Wallacean Drongo.
