Samoan Birding

For the final part of my 3-island Pacific Tour for Birding Ecotours I spent a couple of days on the beautiful island of Upolu, Samoa. There was some very nice birds there, one of my favourites was the Cardinal Myzomela - a real stunner and very different to the sub-species I'd seen while on Lifou in New Caledonia.

The Fruit Doves were again spectacular and the endemic Kingfisher - Flat-billed Kingfisher was very smart. It was also great to see White-tailed Tropicbirds and White Terns cruising around everywhere!

Trip Report here: http://birdingecotours.com/trip-reports/samoa

Cardinal Myzomela - stunner!

Crimson-crowned Fruit Dove - keeping up with the quality Doves from New Caledonia & Fiji

Crimson-crowned Fruit Dove with baby!

Flat-billed Kingfisher - a rather smart endemic

Blue-crowned Lorikeet

Pacific Golden Plover - common in gardens!

Buff-banded Rail - so common and out in the open! Running all over the place

Polynesian Wattled Honeyeater - a bit boring!

Samoan Fantail - keeping up with the many Fantails seen in the region

Samoan Starling - enjoying some palm fruits

Samoan Whistler - quite nice - quite different from the other Whistlers in the region

Samoan Whistler - quite nice - quite different from the other Whistlers in the region

Brown Noddy giving a flyby across the moon!

Pacific Odyssey

This September-October I'm going to be journeying around the Pacific a little. I'll be commencing my travels from Brisbane, Australia (where I'll get a couple of days birding in with my mate Rob) before heading over to Noumea in New Caledonia for two-weeks of endemic searching. Obviously top target there is the endemic and rather unique Kagu (below).

Kagu (Pelagic Odyssey)

I'll likely try and get across to a couple of the loyalty islands if flights aren't prohibitively expensive - I'm thinking Ouvea and Lifou, each island also has some endemics to go for - such as the Ouvea Parakeet, and Lifou Large White-eye. Anyone know of a cheap way to do these islands?

There's so many exciting birds on New Caledonia - with New Caledonian Crow and Crow Honeyeater being two birds I'm keen on locating for different reasons, but one I really 'want/need' to see is Cloven-feathered Dove - wow!

Cloven-feathered Dove (Unknown)

After a couple of weeks exploration in New Caledonia I'm heading over to Fiji for a couple of weeks. I'll be visiting three islands - Viti Levu, Vanua Levu, and Kadavu, each with an interesting set of birds. Again some of the highlights are likely to be Pigeons... I don't say that often! But with Crimson-crowned Fruit-Dove, Many-coloured Fruit-Dove, Golden Fruit Dove, Whistling Fruit Dove, and Orange Fruit Dove (below) it's easy to see why! Plenty of interesting endemics to chase across all the different islands too - such as Silktail for example - still a bit of an unknown quantity.

Orange Fruit Dove (Aviceda)

The final stop on this leg of the trip will be a few days in (Western) Samoa - here there are a few more endemics to go look for. I think it will take a bit of luck for Tooth-billed Pigeon, but I'll give it a go! I'll be happy to see the Samoan Flycatcher (below)!

Samoan Flycatcher (Peter O)

I've got some personal birding while here, but the majority of my time will be leading the Birding Ecotours Pacific Tour - details of the 3 week tour can be found by CLICKING HERE. We're taking bookings for 2017!

After this tour is completed I head across to New Zealand. More on that soon....