Backcountry Birding

As I set foot outside the airport doors I was hit with a wall of hot, humid night air and the clamor of 300 taxi drivers suggesting I hire them (or asking if I was the tourist who had already hired them). 

I had just finished 48 hours of flying and layovers, starting from Buenos Aires, spending a few hours in São Paulo Brazil, then Doha, Qatar and finally arriving in Bali, Indonesia. I groggily made my way through the visa line, then the customs line, and finally ran the taxi-driver gauntlet. I made sure to check an online driver service beforehand to get a ballpark for the fare to my hotel, and managed to negotiate a reasonable (albeit a little more expensive) price to get there. Once I had showered I hit the pillow at 8pm and slept like a log.

The next morning jetlag meant that I was up and at ‘em at about 4am! I upheld a proud tenet of birding culture when the first place I went birding on a new continent was a wastewater treatment facility. Water treatment plants have an overabundance of *nutrients* which leads to a hyper-productive food chain, often attracting serious numbers of birds anywhere in the world. This one was very cool, with trees planted on little islands throughout and an absurd number of waterbirds.

I was ecstatic to see pretty much every one of the 31 species I found, especially the incredibly-well-named Intermediate Egret. I was even happier to snap this photo, with the species framed by a Little Egret on the left and a Great Egret on the right.

The name ‘Intermediate’ does NOT make sense without the existence of these other two species, and so this moment had me grinning like an idiot all by myself on my first day in Indonesia. I was also pretty chuffed to find Cerulean Kingfisher, Malaysian Pied-Fantail, Little Pied-Cormorant and White-bellied Sea-Eagle. It was neat to see Striated Heron, a bird that I saw many times in Argentina, at the other side of its massive cosmopolitan range.

The most surprising thing about the whole day might have been the way that Swiftlets fly. They are so strangely slow and flappy, almost like a poorly animated ‘generic bird’ in a low budget film. I had truly never seen anything like them… I was giddy.

The next day I visited Uluwatu temple on the western side of the southern peninsula, an impressive Hindu place of worship perched atop 250m sea cliffs.

I got to enjoy watching scores of Cave Swiftlets catching insects at eye-level, and the temple’s many Long-tailed Macaques got to enjoy watching me as I walked around, trying to ignore their gaze. I, as a rule, do not like monkeys. But here is what they looked like anyway:

Next I headed across the island (spotting an unmistakable Javan Kingfisher on a power line above a rice paddy along the way) to Bali Barat National Park, where I met up with Tolak, a guide with Bali Birding Tours. Read about our morning in my next blog post!

My favorite food so far was Nasi Kuning (Yellow Rice) which is a classic indonesian breakfast food, served with crunchy onion pieces, crisps and a sprinkling of some salty protein. In Bali this was usually very finely shredded pulled pork.

Bali is majority Hindu, while most other parts of Indonesia are majority Muslim. Pork was almost comically popular here, with signs for Babi Guling (roasted pig) almost everywhere. I only tried it a couple of times, and got fairly unlucky with the bits of the pig that were left by the time I ordered. But I’m sure that if you get a good cut it would be delicious.

One afternoon while I was in West Bali I got to hang out with a few of the neighborhood kids from around the hotel. They had a pretty awesome kite that they were flying, and they let me draw a Hawk-Eagle (could’ve been either Ornate or Javan, they’re very similar) on the tail in sharpie.

There are loads of mobile food vendors that sell Bakso (Meatball) soup, and one of them came by the hotel and so I bought us all bowls of soup (at about 30c apiece I’d say that was a good use of $1.50).

With Bakso Soup you get the meatballs, some noodles and a plain salty broth. Then you get to decide how much sweet soy sauce, tomato sauce and hot chili you add to get the perfect balance for your taste. I had really been missing spicy food in Argentina and Paraguay, so it was great to load up the chili and really char the old taste buds! Here is a close up of Bakso from a different restaurant:

After a couple of days in Bali I made a must-see detour, to a place that was pretty interesting from a conservation standpoint. A few folks already know where I went, but stick around to find out in an upcoming post!

Stats from after the Javan Kingfisher, before birding with Tolak:

Year List: 766 | Lifers this year: 485 | Life List: 1771