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| Early morning looking south from Loloata Island. |
Our TCL TV was getting progressively darker - first a strip down the left hand side then regular blanking out and finally a dark strip down the right side as well. I searched online for the manual and ChatGPT eventually told me that the TV was ancient and that I should be embarrassed. I didn't tell it how old my TV is at home. Anyway we came home one evening and there was a shiny new Samsung (a bit smaller but you can't have everything). Thank-you HBS Village! Next job is to get the bedroom aircon fixed.
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| Our ancient, dying TV. |
We have just had the Easter break in Port Moresby - two nights in town and two at Loloata Island Resort. Unusually for us we do not have to put in a travel insurance claim as all plans worked just fine.
On Saturday we went up to Varirata National Park for a day's birding with legendary local guide Daniel Wakra. I've been there before. In 1994 I went on a PNG Bird tour with Rockjumper Birding and we had three visit to the park. This trip resulted in 42 species including two lifers - Growling Riflebird and Papuan Scrub Robin. The Riflebird is my 23rd Bird-of-paradise. The Scrub Robin is a skulker, more often heard than seen. We also saw lots of Fruit Dove species, Yellow-billed Kingfisher, Hooded Pitohui (a poisonous bird), Frilled Monarch, Raggiana Bird-of-paradise and Glossy-mantled Manucode. No Cassowary sadly.
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| Raggiana Bird-of-paradise displaying for us. |
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| Blue-winged Kookaburra |
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| Oriental Dollarbird |
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| Plain Honeyeater |
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| Yellow-billed Kingfisher |
When the birds are quiet I look for invertebrates to photograph and on this trip I managed to snap a few butterflies and beetles, an ant and a cricket and I've put them all up on iNaturalist to get help with identification. The ant turned out to be a beetle but the three of us were all certain it was an ant. The cricket is likely to be a species new to science. I got a response from a French entomologist who worked at Madang in 2012 and co-authored the paper describing the new genus Gnominthus a few years ago based on a cricket they found in the forest there. Subsequently, another species of Gnominthus has been found near Milne Bay. Mine appears to be different to the other two but the photos aren't sufficiently detailed (apparently genitalia and stridulation need to be studied). Anyway, I thought it was exciting.
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| 'My' new Gnominthus sp. cricket. |
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| Not an ant but probably a beetle - Tricondyla aptera |
On Sunday we caught the ferry across to Loloata Island Resort for the next two nights. The resort caters to overnight guests and day guests and Sunday was one of their busiest days of the year. I was a bit concerned when a large group of people (born again type christians) joined us on the ferry carrying loudspeakers. I needn't have worried because they barely added to the chaos that greeted us at the resort with hundreds of day-trippers and lots of noise. We had several hours to wait until we could retreat to the peace of our room. Fortunately not many came over for Monday and we enjoyed ourselves snorkelling (Jenny), getting our toes done (Jenny) and birding (me). So I can recommend the resort but suggest you avoid public holidays.
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| Loloata Island Resort. |
The birding was good with a mix of rocky shore, mangroves and a scrubby ridge to explore. Some highlights were Torresian Kingfisher, Pacific Golden Plover in breeding plumage, Pacific Reef Heron, Osprey, Rufous-banded Honeyeater, White-breasted Woodswallow and Sahul Sunbird.
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| Sahul Sunbird |
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| Osprey |
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| White-breasted Woodswallow |
Now we have a few days at work and then our next adventure is a trip to the Keravat Research Centre on East New Britain (near Rabaul) for a week delivering training to the NARI staff there.
We are a bit anxious about the fuel situation here. There is minimal official information but our driver told us this morning that diesel had shot up to 8 Kina ($A2.60)/l. Cheaper than in Australia but before the war it was around 3 Kina ($A1)/l. There have been empty service stations in Lae and travellers to The Highlands were stranded over Easter as Goroka and then Mount Hagen ran out of fuel for a while. Everything here runs on diesel. The electricity supply is unreliable here and businesses rely on diesel generators for much of their power. This is also the case at our house and our workplace. No-one is saying how the supply of aviation fuel is going. We assume our AV management are monitoring the situation here and in all the other countries to which they send volunteers.
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