Sunday April 19
Today was one of the few times we have “birded all day” without other activities. We headed out at 5:30am for a pre-breakfast walk. The objective was to find nocturnal bird species before sunrise. While we heard several we did not see any. On a couple of occasions large bats fluttered past. However, time spent at a bird blind at sunrise gave us a a lot of good activity, including a troop of dusty leaf monkeys. The blind looks out onto a field containing a group of large trees that bear fruit that several bird species enjoy.
After breakfast we headed out again, and walked on boardwalks through the rainforest until lunchtime. Our local guide commented that we were seeing a lot of unusual species and few of the common ones. We told him he could catch up on the common ones tomorrow. We went out again about 3pm and birded until sunset. Most of the time we were on boardwalks that followed the terrain— which means a lot of steps! We saw many wonderful species today; most were colorful and most were also difficult to find in the dense forest; their flitting behavior compounded this issue.
We are staying at the main accommodation for the national park. The camp began over 25 years ago with a handful of cabins but has steadily expanded as the park’s popularity has grown. We are in cabin 105, the last one in the row and a kilometer’s walk from the dining hall. This makes for a bit of time management to get to our group departures on time.
Pictured: Banded Broadbill, Blue-banded Kingfisher, mother and baby Dusty Leaf Monkeys, stairs on the trail
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