Just Jakarta

 

After a pretty quiet start to January, things picked up in the latter part of the month as I was sent to Indonesia on a two-week work trip. This particular trip was in fact very much work-focused, so rather than spending my time enjoying Indonesia's incredible biodiversity and mouth-watering suite of endemic birds, I spent the vast majority of my time going from one building to another in Jakarta's glittering central business district. 

Home sweet home

Indonesians love talking about how much they hate Jakarta, and to some extent they're not wrong; it's a big, polluted, traffic-choked metropolis that's in the process of sinking into the ocean, and it comes with the usual host of big city problems on top of that. However, I'm used to being in Manila, which is a far worse city on pretty much every metric, so I actually found Jakarta to be a nice, refreshing break, with more walkable sidewalks. accessible parks, and (believe it or not) lighter traffic than Manila has ever managed to pull off. 

As it was a work trip I spent most of my time indoors, and I was so knackered by the time I got to my one free weekend that I elected to just spend it in the city, as nice as it would have been to get out and do some proper birding up on a mountain somewhere. It didn't help that, similar to Sorsogon it was the rainy season in Java, and most of the best birding spots were guaranteed to be a rainy nightmare. 

I did, however, still do my best to get out and look at birds, and even managed to get a few lifers along the way. It helped that I picked up a new camera on the way; an OM System OM-1 that I finally decided to bite the bullet and buy, and that birding friend Ravi was nice enough to pick up in the US and take back to the Philippines. I had just enough time to swing through Manila and pick it up on my way to Jakarta, so I was eager to give it a try in my spare time.

My first full day I had a bit of time right before sunset, so I took a walk to explore some bits of green space nearby my office. Even walking by the office meant some new year birds: Sooty-headed Bulbuls in the little manicured palm trees around the road, Eurasian Tree Sparrows nesting on the site of an office building, and dozens of Cave Swiftlets swooping overhead. My first stop was labeled "Hutan Kota Gelora Bung Karno" (Gelora Bung Karno Forest Park) on Google Maps, which was a bit of a misnomer since the "forest" was really just a few trees over grassy hillocks full of families and local office workers trying to get some fresh air and the tiny scraps of public greenery available to them. This is my complaint with the way so many big cities are designed; urban planners are determined to either pave over all the green space they can find or turn it into private hotels or golf courses, but people actually really do want some trees, green space, and nature and will flock to it if they're allowed.

The Gelora Bung Karno Forest Park

Thankfully, there turned out to be another much larger park just across the road from the "forest park", and this one had some proper birding. This was actually just the park surrounding the Bung Karno Stadium, the largest sports complex in Indonesia and one of the largest in Asia. There are lots of nice gardens and parks around the stadium, which are popular with joggers and walkers, and popular with me since they have some big trees and a few birds to boot. It was almost dark so I barely had time for birding. There was time enough to enjoy the Sooty-headed Bulbuls, Scaly-breasted Munias, Cave Swiftlets, House Swifts, and especially the dozens of Red-breasted Parakeets zipping back and forth in the trees above me. 

Scaly-breasted Munia

Sooty-headed Bulbul

The next morning I returned to the GBK gardens properly early, to do some pre-work birding. As expected the park had fewer people and far more birds. At first it was mostly the usual; common birds like Spotted Doves and Scaly-breasted Munias, with a nice look at a beautiful Coppersmith Barbet, of the red-faced Javan subspecies. A couple of Common Ioras foraging in a flowering tree were a nice addition to my Jakarta list, along with a few Plantain Squirrels feeding on a tree fruits.

Scaly-breasted Munia

Spotted Dove

Coppersmith Barbet; the red-headed Javan birds look like no Coppersmith Barbets anywhere else, except somehow the subspecies endemic to Negros, Panay, and Cebu in the central Philippines which have almost identical plumage. Quite the taxonomic oddity.

Common Iora

Plantain Squirrel

Slowly however, I began to cotton on to something being seriously off about the local birdlife. I was repeatedly hearing birds that my brain kept telling me were lorikeets, even though I knew that there are no lorikeets on Java or anywhere near it. Finally, I was forced to admit that the small parrots with twittering calls flying overhead were not just more Red-breasted Lorikeets, but were in fact dozens of Olive-headed Lorikeets, birds endemic to Timor and the rest of the eastern Nusa Tenggara archipelago, thousands of kilometers away. Soon they were joined by a huge, brilliantly colored Coconut Lorikeet, another parrot that's not supposed to be anywhere near Jakarta. These were, of course, signs of Indonesia's tragically huge caged bird trade, a huge, slow-motion conservation disaster that's resulted in the large-scale trapping and trafficking of any Indonesian bird unfortunate enough to have colorful plumage or a nice song. While these were marked as escapees on my eBird list (and thus didn't count as lifers for me), the Olive-headed Lorikeets at least must have a self-sustaining population in downtown Jakarta, considering how many of them there were all around the park.

Olive-headed Lorikeet

Coconut

The next morning I returned to the same park, but tried a different section that proved to be much quieter, lots of twittering Olive-headed Lorikeets aside. I was just about to give up when I saw a huge, reddish-winged bird fly past me. I had an intrusive thought that it looked like a bird of paradise, which I chalked up to pure craziness- at least until I relocated the bird and found that it was, in fact, a Lesser Bird of Paradise! It was likely an immature male and lacked the crazy plumes its family is known for, but it clinched its ID by giving a crazy call I'd only heard before in videos of David Attenborough. My lens was all foggy from my hotel's air conditioning so I messed up my photos, but I was still able to get record shots of what was easily the craziest exotic bird sighting I've ever had.

Lesser Bird of Paradise??!!???

This was, of course, yet another sign of Jakarta's caged bird trade, and one of the sadder ones given it was a bird displaying for a mate that would never come, since all the females are presumably still on New Guinea. Still, part of me appreciated the sheer ludicrousness of it all. Walking out of the park I had several singing Ashy Tailorbirds, a couple of adorably cuddled-up Spotted Doves, and a surprised flyover from a Racket-tailed Treepie, which was an Indonesia lifer for me.

Ashy Tailorbird

Spotted Dove

That weekend, birding friends Khaleb and Boas of Jakarta Birder invited me to join them and some other local birders and photographers on a boat trip out to Jakarta Bay. I had actually done this once before, on my last visit to Jakarta way back in 2019. I had an excellent time and saw almost all of my targets (except for the elusive Javan Coucal), but the only problem was that all of my pics were tragically deleted shortly after, leaving me itching to return for a second try. I was, of course, also excited for another trip with good birding friends and seeing a little more of Jakarta than one little downtown park.

We met early in the morning for coffee near one of the canals heading into Jakarta Bay, and ended up departing a bit later than expected as we waited for the rain to let up. The weather had been pretty decent up until that point, but naturally it chose the day I was out all day birding to rain almost nonstop. Thankfully the boat we were taking was a covered one, so we were able to do the whole thing more or less dry despite the downpour all around us. It also allowed for some nice, atmospheric light rather than the usually harsh lighting conditions of photographing birds on the open sea. 

The boat ride along the little canal led us along some mangrove areas and gave us the first birds of the day, which were mostly herons of various types: Grey Herons, Purple Herons, Striated Herons, Javan Pond Herons, Little Egrets, Great Egrets, Black-crowned Night Herons... the list went on. One of the best birds of the day was a single Milky Stork, a globally threatened bird that's mysteriously common in the Jakarta area. 

Grey Heron

Purple Heron

Black-crowned Night Heron

Striated Heron

Milky Stork

Long-tailed Macaques, typically common as they are in most of Southeast Asia

Getting out to sea we enjoyed the sight of various Grey Herons and Whiskered Terns perched up on exposed sticks looking like Japanese woodblock paintings. The most surprising find of the day was a single Sunda Teal that swam shockingly close to our boat, seemingly unwilling or unable to take off and fly away as they usually did. It had a wound in the back of its neck which may have had something to do with it, though it still seemed otherwise fairly lively. Certainly it was the best view of this species I've ever had. There was a big group of Little Egrets feeding along the riprap of a reclaimed island, joined by a single Little Black Cormorant and a huge Common Water Monitor. A distant flock of White-headed Munias was a nice addition to my year list. 

Grey Heron

Whiskered Tern

Sunda Teal- note the injury on the neck

Little Black Cormorant

White-headed Munias

Common Water Monitor- this one appeared to have a plastic bag wrapped around its neck

Jakarta in miniature: little fishing boat in front of colossal beachside developments

The boat photography crew

We took the boat through the Muara Angke Wetlands Preserve nearby in hopes of finding a Javan Coucal or other good birds. The hope was that if the rain let up the coucals would be up and sunning themselves as they like to do, but unfortunately the rain didn't let up, instead just getting harder as we entered the mangrove area. The tide was also too high to look for good birds like Javan Plovers, so instead we had to satisfy ourselves with the usual herons, including lots of Grey Herons, Javan Pond Herons, and Little Egrets.

Little Egret in the typical coastal Jakarta habitat

Some of the breeding plumage Javan Pond Herons looked quite snazzy...

...others not so much

Grey Heron showing off its catch

We headed out to sea, toward the fish cages that were famous for housing roosting terns and frigatebirds. It was 45 minutes or so of boating out toward the open ocean, with the main excitement being a distant White-bellied Sea Eagle that took off before we could get too close. Once we arrived at the fish cages the terns were indeed there- mostly Great Crested Terns but also a few Lesser Crested Terns, a bird I'd only seen once before and never managed a decent picture of. We also managed to get better looks at the sea eagle, though it was quite skittish. Unfortunately the frigatebirds that usually roost in good numbers in that area were nowhere to be found- apparently they prefer to fly around on rainy days. We saw only one very distant Christmas Island Frigatebird flying away from us.

Great Crested Terns

Lesser Crested Tern

White-bellied Sea Eagle

We returned to the coast, and spent a while photographing the big group of egrets we had seen earlier. An Oriental Darter was perched along the shore when we arrived, though it took off as soon as it saw us. The many egrets along the shore provided lots of photo opportunities- there was some excitement for a Great Egret in full breeding plumage, including pink legs and bright blue-green facial skin, very different from the usual colors. Javan Pond Herons were also showing themselves off in spectacular breeding colors, as were some Little Egrets, including breeding males with pink facial skin, and some of the migratory subspecies with yellow feet (the Indonesian resident birds have all-black legs, unlike what I'm used to). Photography was tough with lots of white birds constantly moving around, but thankfully that's the sort of thing that the OM-1's bird detection autofocus is designed for so I was still able to come away with some shots I was happy with.

Oriental Darter- such weird birds and I'm always happy to see them

Great Egret in breeding colors

A Great Egret in more normal coloration

Javan Pond Heron

Little Egrets- the one on top with the yellow legs is the migratory garzetta subspecies, while the one on the bottom with black and pink feet is the resident nigripes flavor

It was more of the same as the boat returned up the canal, including the same Milky Stork perched up on a tree and flocks of Daurian Starlings flying overhead. A little group of Small Minivets was a nice surprise as well. We returned to (sort of) dry land and headed to a nice cafe and donut shop, where we unwound with donuts and some absurdly cute corgis. 

Milky Stork

Purple Heron

Small Minivet

There's no reason for dogs to be this adorable

On Sunday, January 29 I headed to the Ragunan Zoo, another well-known Jakarta destination recommended to me by Java birder Panji. I got a criminally late start to birding- partly because I decided to wait around for my (free and delicious) hotel breakfast, and partly because I took a Grab to the wrong gate, which it turns out was totally closed. By the time I got in it was almost 9 in the morning, and getting very hot and crowded. The birds were still there though- first a nice Pink-necked Green Pigeon feeding on palm fruits, and then a gorgeous Indigo-banded Kingfisher and a brilliantly-colored Scarlet-headed Flowerpecker hanging out by the hippo enclosure. Jakarta's escapee birds were on full display at the zoo; aside from the obvious captive birds there were also feral Yellow-crested Cockatoos and Tanimbar Corellas- critically endangered and near threatened (respectively) in their home range thanks to the very caged bird trade that brought them here to Jakarta. 

Pink-necked Green Pigeon

Scarlet-headed Flowerpecker

Yellow-crested Cockatoos

Tanimbar Corella

My main target of the day was Bar-winged Prinia, a Java and Sumatra endemic I'd somehow missed on my previous visit, and heard only the day before at Muara Angke. Panji had told me where to look for them in the primate enclosure, but since I wasn't smart enough to get a map when I entered, I spent a great deal of time wandering around trying to find it within the extensive grounds of the zoo. I still saw some good birds- some beautiful Javan Mynas hanging out with the captive Babirusas, lots of Sooty-headed Bulbuls, and a nice Freckle-breasted Woodpecker. I also got my picture taken with about a thousand different Indonesian aunties, who seemed to find me more of an oddity than any of the animals in the zoo enclosures. 

Javan Myna with a sleepy Babirusa

Sooty-headed Bulbul

Large Crow Butterfly (Euploea phaenareta)

Finally, I found the primate enclosure, though it took me a while to find the actual prinia. First I tried a little grove of bamboo, which had no prinias but did have a surprise Horsfield's Babbler, a bird that was definitely in its native range but should only be in areas with proper forest. It's quite possible it was an escapee (they have very nice songs, even though they don't look like much), but it was actually the first eBird record for Jakarta. After some more searching I finally found a beautiful singing Bar-winged Prinia- certainly the best-looking prinia with its blue-grey breast, white throat, and yellow belly. Outside the gorilla enclosure were several Olive-backed Tailorbirds and another brilliant Scarlet-headed Flowerpecker. Walking around the zoo a bit more, I found a few more Javan Mynas, several Scaly-breasted Munias, and a nice singing Brown-throated Sunbird.

Horsfield's Babbler

Bar-winged Prinia

Olive-backed Tailorbird

Scarlet-headed Flowerpecker

Red-breasted Parakeet

Scaly-breasted Munia

Javan Myna

Brown-throated Sunbird

The remainder of my time in Jakarta was mostly just work, though I did manage to make one more trip to the GBK gardens, where I saw a surprise male Black-naped Monarch, another bird in its native range that was nonetheless likely an escapee. I flew back to the Philippines on February 3, and immediately started another birding adventure although that will definitely have to wait for the next blog post.