In September 2024 we joined the Ornis trip to Bougainville and The Louisiades, and before the main tour started we were also part of the scouting team on Bougainville to look for several lost birds. We have been to remote places for birds before on our trips, but this trip was a whole new adventure!

We arrived 10 days before the start of the tour with Joshua and John with the main goal to find Bougainville Moustached Kingfisher and then also try for other lost birds such as Bougainville Thicketbird, Bougainville (Black-backed) Thrush and the Bougainville race of Black-faced Pitta. The first 7 days we chased many stories of possible sightings and had many crazy adventures but with zero positive results. That all changed however in the days that followed: on day 8 while we had split up searching for the Kingfisher before dawn on a ridge Josh heard a sounds that was possibly the soft churring call of the kingfisher. We had chased sounds up to that points (many turned out to be frogs) so we left our bags on the ridge and climbed down the steep slopes. At first there was no response, but then 5 minutes later and more down the slope suddenly the loud song of the Moustached Kingfisher started our adrenaline rush and a moment later the bird flew into view. An unforgettable moment: a mythical big kingfisher, with streaking yellow and blue and a red bill that will be forever in our memory.

Luckily in the days that follows also photos were taken and the bird was eventually seen by everyone on the tour. To make our scouting pre-tour even better Josh also (re)discovered the Bougainville Thicketbird on day 9 while the Bougainville Island Thrush that Rob and I found turned out to be relatively common at higher altitudes.

The second part of the trip was by boat the remote Louisiade Archipelago, a very remote corner of PNG. The birding was very successful with highlights such as Louisiade Pitta, Rossel Paradise Kingfisher, Tagula Butcherbird, Tagula White-eye and Tagula Manucode. We even had time left to do some amazing snorkelling.

[Top photo of Moustached Kingfisher by Julien Mazenauer]

Some photos

Our fourth stop in our year of travelling after a 5,5 week trip in West Papua. There is quite a lot of overlap with the Western part of Papua, but there remained more than enough to justify a trip and take a first bite of the specialities of PNG. To minimize overlap we mainly focussed on some islands (Normanby, Manus, New Britain) and added a visit in the highlands (Tari) for some additional Birds of Paradise and species we knew were difficult in West Papua.
Since we are still traveling this is a preliminary trip report with our main findings and a rough annotated species list (counts are incomplete and subspecies indication is missing). Please send us an email if you are missing any information.

PNG – Tripreport
Some photo’s
GPS Map