At 5:00 a.m. the night in the Ambua Lodge, a luxurious mountain hotel, is over. Today a trip around Ambua Lodge in the Southern Highlands is announced. After breakfast we start driving. It is still quite dark, but it does not rain. The target species of our morning observations are the Blue Bird-of-paradise (Paradisornis rudolphi) and the Superb Bird-of-paradise (Lophorina superba).
Our guide, Benson, drives us to hurry. After a short drive, stop on the edge of a small settlement and in a rush, Benson leads us on narrow paths over a steep slove and a valley up again on a hill. Here is an invisible border. We cannot go any further. The village beyond the border does not give permission to enter their gardens and fields. We are now on a small agricultural plateau at about 1,900 m (asl). The distance offers a beautiful, mist-covered view on old primeval trees. This is the place to see the Birds-of-paradise. On small birds Benson calls Brown Quail (Synoicus ypsilophorus) and Iceland Leaf-Warbler (Phylloscopus poliocephalus), which is also called New Guinea Leaf warbler probably belong in the area to the subspecies giulianettii. Our second guide, Peter, takes me aside after a short time. He has a very special job for my camera, which he wanted to show me. So we walk through allotments, intensively farmed, narrow sunken paths, past pigsties until we come to a collection of huts, where also some fruity trees exist. Here the photographer can get started. A female Blue Bird-of-Paradise quickly appears. Even the male of the Blue Bird-of-Paradise does not take a long time before coming in. The male Blue Bird-of-paradise can be admired for his impressive, vehement courtship. The male of the Blue Bird-of-paradise shows above all his long, silky tail feathers amazingly.
Papua New Guinea not only has to offer the Blue Bird-of-paradise. New Guinea is the main distribution of this family with a total of 43 species. New Guinea owes this fact the nickname “Island of Birds of Paradise. More pictures of birds of paradise can be seen in the gallery of photographed species of birds of paradise during a birding trip in 2010.
The Ambua Lodge is in the fairly remote Tari district of Papua-New Guinea (PNG) is a lovely, traditionally-built lodge situated in the mountains with a spectacular view of the valley below. The main room is a large wood construction space roofed over in traditional thatch, and featuring magnificent totem poles carved from whole tree trunks.
The rooms are mainly traditional round huts scattered around the hotel area. These are huts, which have a nice setting down amongst the gardens and are very romantic. But recently they build modern rooms which are better insulated and drier. The weather can be very changeable, and in the afternoon the lodge is often inside clouds with frequent rain. The temperature really drops when this happens. Thus bring warm clothing. The road from the lodge into the next town is pretty bumpy.
To cope with the growing demand for top shots of the rarer species not only of the Western Palearctic, Bird-Lens is keen to enrich the range of pictures of birds you can find in the western Palearctic. Trips to remote places to capture images were very successful. The nice image of the blog is only a first impression, what you will find in the gallery in the “Picture Shop” very soon. Just give bird-lens.com a message, if bird-lens.com could serve you with an image needed before the new pictures are online.