Today me and two friends flew from Port Moresby to a city called Daru, a flight on about an hour from PM, this city is confined in the southern parts of the trans-fly. The time here is 22:00pm, we are still in Daru and we will probably not try to get out of the city until tomorrow as its not safe to travelling around this time of the night.
But early tomorrow we will pack down our things and then start heading north to the largest river in this region, called the fly river, a largely destroyed region today and you need to travell further north to get to the real hotspots, you almost needs to enter the Indonesian part of the river to come to these areas, but as we not are going that far north it will not be a goal for us, we are planning to reach a village called Suki by tomorrow night, and then in a few days (2-3) we will enter Indonesia as the Indonesian part offers a lot better birding. We will be out for about a week and be back next saturday and with a plan to end the trip in a city called Mappi.
Looking forward to hearing yor trip report
We wooke up very early in the morning, ate some breakfast, put down our things and then headed out in Daru to look after a place to rent a car, we searched for 3 hours before we manage to find a place which rented small blue holdens, the car we did get was in a poor condition, the dires was almost flat, dirty, the blue colour was almost gone, many of the windows was crashed and this was a very ugly car. But as we wanted to get away to took it. Our goal was try to reach Oriomo, a small city located around 40km north of Daru, the way from Daru to Oriomo was good and it took only 50 minutes to reach the small city, as we had thught not a single bird was spotted along the road, the car had no radio and the other guys was sleeping, boring start of the trip, when we passed Oriomo the road was very poor with large holes in the road, the first bird sighting almost ended bad, as we was driving on the road leding from Oriomo, the grass along the road was thick, and suddenly a small family on 5 Wandering whistling ducks Dendrocygna arcuata walked out in the road, they was apprently trying to reach a small pond on the other side of the road, I stood on the brakes and turned left to avaid hitting the birds, I stopped and maked sure that no other cats hit the birds, luckily all made it over and jumped happily down in the pond, probably not aware of the danger they just had faced. A few minutes later our car brooke down, we called the car rental and said that they had to come and get the car, we didnt wait and a kind farmer gave us a lift to the city called Iamara, he was transpoting a few pigs and the smell was really awful, after two hours of driving the reached Iamara. We soon realized that we wont be able to reach Suki this day as that was another 7-8 hours drive further west. We decided to take a ferry to Kenalia, we bought a few thickets and headed to the ferry terminal, fly river is a very wide river up to Kenalia and the river banks is either covered by settlements or industries. We didnt see many birds, in the ferry terminal we spotted a few mixed groups with Spotted Whistling-Duck Dendrocygna guttata and Wandering Whistling-Duck Dendrocygna arcuata, most birds was either covered by oil or had fishing nets around their head or their feets, a horrible sight, we didnt see many other species, Magpie Goose Anseranas semipalmata only three birds flying over the upper river bank, one bird had a bloody wing and had probably been shot by a hunter, Pacific Black Duck Anas superciliosa small groups grazzed in the fields, a single Brahminy Kite Haliastur indus seen circulating over the river and probably searched after something to eat, Beach Thick-knee Burhinus magnirostris a few birds on the upper river banks and finally we spotted a single Masked Lapwing Vanellus miles just before reaching Kenalia.
A poor and mostly said birding day, we hope that we dont will se such much half dead birds as we moves to the more remote areas of the river. The river gets about half the size after Kenalia and the birding seems more promesing tomorrow.