If I ever win the lottery, I know what I'm doing. The dream bins,
the uni-fund, grandma's Greek villa, it can all wait. I'm getting a one way flight
to Jakarta, then hopping on an eagle emblazoned Gurada Indonesia plane to the small island of Ternate. Why? Not for
the wealth of endemic cuscuses - eerily cute cat/monkey/ET hybrids. Not for the
Syzygium aromatics tree, the flower
buds of which were once the only source of cloves in the world. Not even for
the planet's largest bee species; the formidable Megachile pluto, a black, jawed leviathan, an insect larger than a wren and
with a penchant for nesting within active
termite colonies.
No, my pilgrimage to Ternate is for a boat service. The only boat
service, in fact, for the island of Obi.
About 50km at its widest point (the UK’s is just under 500km),
it's a forested, mountainous tropical island the same size as the urban area of
Rennes in France, but a population of 170,000 fewer; a mix of ethnicities
living on seafood and money made from logging and gold mining. I'm not here to
take in the climate (warm and wet with two monsoon seasons), the culture (not
much unless you like fishing or cutting down trees) or the culinary delights (I
don't even like lobster). No, I've made this 12,600km trip for a dumpy brown
bird with nocturnal habits and no character.
I feel like I’m not selling this
well.
The bird in question is the Obi Woodcock Scolopax rochussenii (also known as the Moluccan Woodcock) and it’s
a forest-dwelling, orangey-ochre, swivel-eyed mystery. First recorded by
Heinrich Bernstein, who collected a single specimen from Obi in 1862 (he then
died of illness in New Guinea in 1865, leaving the bird undescribed until 1866
when his specimen arrived in the Netherlands), it had been
seen in life only twice by western scientists until 2012. Up until then, a mere
7 additional individuals were recorded in the 150 years since that first male
woodcock succumbed to the Dutch scientist’s gun. Even expeditions as recent as
1989, 1992 and 2010 yielded no visible avian fruit, although its voice was recorded
for the first time in 2010; a squeaky tit-like witter performed
whilst roding.
The events of 2012, however, are a huge milestone for ornithology;
a big red pin on the Obi Woodcock timescale. Between July and August, a team
from the Royal Geographic Society visited Obi to fully assess this black hole
of a wader and its habits. Surveying 21 sites whilst camping in the hot humid montane
forests for a month is a feat in itself, but the team managed to record the
bird (by sight or sound) on 51 occasions! The first ever pictures of the species were also obtained,
the most exciting grainy brown smudges I have ever laid my woodcock-popping eyes
on. Amazing!
 |
| The first photographs of an Obi Woodcock -ever! ©John C. Mittermeier |
Whilst the information gained from this expedition gives little
information about the birds habits compared to that available for other more accessible
and more intensively studied species, it was ground-breaking for the global knowledge
of this bird. For example, the long-assumed fact that it was a bird of
purely montane forest was dispelled when the team flushed a woodcock along a coastal
river. Later it was discovered that the birds actually occurred at higher
densities in lowland areas than in highland ones.
I guess it’s the unknown element of the bird that attracts me to
it so much. I relish the thought at being the first person to see some of its
terrestrial habits, to be able to add something new to the vast world of
ornithology. The age of exploration is largely over, how many more times will be able to feel like pioneers in a field?
I want to find out how it feeds? What on? What are its predators (not humans, it seems that Obi-ites prefer lobster to woodcock)? Is it threatened (with the scale of mining and logging on the island, probably)?
I want to find out how it feeds? What on? What are its predators (not humans, it seems that Obi-ites prefer lobster to woodcock)? Is it threatened (with the scale of mining and logging on the island, probably)?
Even just sitting on the damp forest floor, the Moluccan night sky stretched
above me, with the twittering score of roding Obi Woodcocks mingled with the
insect and frog chorus would do it for me, as I’d feel the smug privilege that only a handful of
people had experienced this too.
 |
| Harmless game of "Where's Woodcock? - Moluccan version" |
-Jonnie Fisk
Jonnie is an 18 year-old Yorkshire-based birder, invertebrate enthusiast and frustrated artist. When not being oblivious to every local rarity, he enjoys autumn vis-mig and being distracted by bugs. https://twitter.com/jonnie_fisk
http://smewsliandwheatearbix.blogspot.co.uk/
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