Christmas in July

 

In mid-July I left the Philippines once again and headed towards the US. I didn't take the direct route though, as I still had a few days of meetings in Indonesia. The meetings were, sadly, in Jakarta but I did have one free morning before I had to be back in the office. It was a pretty easy choice to return to Jakarta Bay and the Muara Angke mangroves, where I could look for Javan Coucal, one of the only lifers I could get in Jakarta and one I had dipped on twice before. It was also a chance to see the famous frigatebirds of Jakarta Bay, which I had seen on my first visit but didn't have any pictures of. 

I didn't really feel like figuring out logistics on my own, and I didn't feel like birding alone to begin with, so instead I went with Boas, a bird guide of the Jakarta Birders and a friend. A couple of Boas' friends ended up tagging along as well, and the four of us met up in north Jakarta early the morning of July 17 to get started. I had gotten in late at night the previous evening and only slept a couple hours, but this was my only free morning in Jakarta and damned if I wasn't going to make the most of it. 

We met up with the boat driver on the edge of a trash-filled canal and motored out toward the sea as the sun rose. It was mostly dark as we went through the mangroves so we didn't see much, but as always the area was full of birds despite being some of the worst habitat I've ever seen. Many Grey Herons flew by, some in nice breeding plumage, and near the edge of a breakwall we came across a pair of Milky Storks, one of Jakarta's star birds. Surprisingly close to shore we also had a pair of Lesser Crested Terns chasing  each other on and off a bamboo pole, and other usual birds like Little Egrets, Oriental Darters, and Sunda Teals.

Sunrise on Jakarta Bay

Grey Heron

Milky Stork

Lesser Crested Tern

Little Egret

Oriental Darter

Little Black Cormorant

Sunda Teals nest on the hulks of old dead ships in Jakarta Bay, which makes them much cooler

The main destination of the morning was the Muara Angke mangroves, a tiny little patch of remaining coastal habitat sandwiched between expressways, malls, and fishing villages. It's the last refuge of habitat for a lot of wetland and mangrove birds, including Javan Coucal, which has undergone a precipitous decline in its range thanks to habitat destruction and (inexplicably) trapping for the caged bird trade. The best place to see the coucal is in a tiny, trash-filled inlet next to a shantytown, but I guess that's what the coucals like. As we neared the edge we came across many Common Moorhens foraging in the garbage by the shoreline, and to our surprise a beautiful Black-backed Swamphen made an appearance as well along with an adorable baby White-breasted Waterhen. I also spotted a Brown Honeyeater, which would have been a lifer a year or two ago when it was still "Indonesian Honeyeater" but has now sadly been lumped with the birds I've seen in Australia.

Common Moorhen

Purple Swamphen

White-breasted Waterhen

"Indonesian" Brown Honeyeater

We entered the inlet and started looking for coucals, which are most often seen perched up in the early morning sunning themselves. Well, spoiler alert, we dipped, making it the third time I've managed to not see the damn coucal. That was a little disappointing, but the mangroves were full of birds, and surprisingly we saw over 50 species of birds just in that tiny little polluted inlet. I even managed to get two lifers- a flyover flock of endemic White-capped Munias, and a few migratory Horsfield's Bronze Cuckoos, which was also a lifer for Boas. We also had a heard-only Common Flameback, a flyover from a couple of Racket-tailed Treepies, a Square-tailed Drongo-Cuckoo, and many of the usual birds like Javan Mynas, Bar-winged Prinias, Plain Prinias, and Golden-headed Cisticola. Despite the good birds, photo opportunities were few, which I guess is to be expected given we were on a boat peering into distant undergrowth.

Racket-tailed Treepie

Horsfield's Bronze Cuckoo

We eventually gave up on finding the coucal, and instead motored out into Jakarta Bay to look for some frigatebirds. The usual frigatebird roost was several kilometers away, requiring a boat trip through seemingly endless fish cages and bamboo poles, past the tiny offshore islands formerly used as prisons and leper colonies by the Dutch and now turned into museums or fancy resorts. We went through some large groups of roosting terns, mostly Great Crested Terns along with a few Whiskered Terns, Common Terns, and Lesser Crested Terns. 

Great Crested Tern

Common Tern

Classic Jakarta Bay scene

Finally we spotted a few frigatebirds on some distant bamboo poles, which upon approach turned out to be three Christmas Frigatebirds and a single Lesser Frigatebird. Lesser Frigatebird is reasonably common throughout Southeast Asia, but the Christmas Frigatebird (named for Christmas Island not for the holiday) is the real star bird of Jakarta Bay: considered critically endangered by at least some authorities, and in ongoing decline mostly because it's persecuted by fishermen in Indonesia. Thankfully they seem to still be doing alright in Jakarta Bay for whatever reason, and we saw quite a few of them on our boat trip.

Christmas Frigatebirds

Immature Christmas Frigatebird

We spotted another group of frigatebirds wheeling around a fishing boat in the distance, so we decided to head over to get better pictures. That proved to be an excellent idea, as we got to spend the next hour with Christmas Frigatebirds and Great Frigatebirds flying past our noses at eye level, swooping down and plucking fish from the water and bullying the Great Crested Terns and Common Terns for fish. It was one of the coolest birding experiences of the year- even sweeter since all of my pictures from my only other time seeing Christmas Frigatebird had been deleted. It helps that frigatebirds are absolutely spectacular: enormous pterodactyl-birds cruising around at high speeds trying to pirate fish from smaller birds. What follows is only a tiny sampling of the thousands of pictures I was able to get.

Male Christmas Frigatebird

Female Christmas Frigatebird

As it turns out, frigatebirds are kind of dicks

Great Frigatebird

Great Crested Tern

Common Tern

Lesser Crested Tern

A tiny jumping spider (Menemerus nigli) hitching a ride on our boat

Eventually we had our fill (and filled our memory cards) with the frigatebirds, and headed back toward land so we could go home and sleep or go back to work. We did stop in the canal for a Grey Heron that had caught an enormous Sharptooth Catfish, and again for a Milky Stork hanging out in the middle of a bunch of egrets.

Grey Heron with an unfortunate Sharptooth Catfish

Milky Stork

Whiskered Tern

It had been a truly fantastic day of photography and even some lifers, despite missing my main target of the day. I had a few more days in Indonesia that were entirely spent at the office, and then I flew back to DC to continue my attempted move to the US. Considering I'm writing this from a hotel in Jakarta, it seems that that didn't work very well, but we shall see...