All this way for a leaf warbler?!

 

This was it! I'd finally done it. It had taken more than 24 hours of exhausting travel, I could only see out of one eye, and my right hand was a bloody, mangled mess, but it was all worth it, for the bird I'd came for was right in front of me. After all, who wouldn't put in all that work for something that looks like this:

*record scratch*

*freeze frame*

You may be wondering how I got here....

Rewind to September of this year, when I realized I would have 5 days or so to kill in Indonesia before I needed to be in the Philippines. This was longer than my usual weekend expeditions, so I wasn't sure where I should go. Indonesia has something like 500 species of endemic bird after all, and I've only seen a fraction of them in my romps around Java this year. I considered spending some time cleaning up my few remaining Javan endemics, but realized that might be impractical considering their distribution. I also considered a trip out to Kangean Island to search for the mysterious Kangean Tit-Babbler, but ornithologist Alex Berryman scooped me on it a few weeks before, and informed me that aside from the tit-babbler birding on Kangean was a mix of boring and extremely depressing. 

Alex did have another suggestion, however: a visit to Selayar, a small oblong island south of Sulawesi. James Eaton had visited there back in 2017 and in a brief afternoon visit managed to discover an entirely new species of bird, because I guess that's just what you do if you're James Eaton and have an afternoon to kill. The new bird in question was a leaf warbler, one of the extremely diverse and almost-invariably drab genus Phylloscopus found throughout Eurasia and Africa. This one looked and sounded a bit different from all the other leaf warblers in the area. Alex Berryman returned there several years and was able to get a recordings of its call, confirming that it was almost certainly a new, undescribed species. He hadn't returned since, however, and recommended we visit there to check on the status of the warbler. 

Now, one may ask why I would choose to spend my precious time in Indonesia visiting a remote island to look for a little brown job rather than going to see, say, birds of paradise or ground cuckoos. In all honesty I don't have a better answer to that than "I dunno, it sounded fun". Having gotten started with birding in the Philippines,  poorly-known island endemics have a special place in my heart. In fact, this wasn't even my first brush with strange, undescribed leaf warblers. It was a chance to get far, far off the beaten path and see birds and other wildlife that very few other birders have ever seen, as well as gathering valuable information for conservation; since neither Berryman or Jeaton had spent much time on the island or been to many sites, it was unclear how rare the warbler really was. If we struggled to find it, that would mean it was much rarer than expected and in need of immediate conservation attention.

For an idea of how poorly-known Selayar is birding-wise, I can count on one hand the number of times birders have visited previously. A number of old-timey biologists visited in the 19th and early 20th centuries but made no mention of a resident leaf warbler, presumably because they couldn't hit them with their shotguns. A few other birders and even a bird tour stopped there more recently, but in an incredible missed opportunity never made it far enough inland to notice any leaf warblers. It was only with Eaton's quick visit in 2017 that they first became known to the outside world (of course, I'm sure the local people of Selayar have known about the leaf warblers for centuries, but so far as I know none of them are on eBird.

Knowing that at the very least I would be doing something very interesting, I decided to dedicate a few days to a visit to Selayar. Thankfully, I wasn't alone in this venture: Angus, who I had just birded with in Yogyakarta, was free during this time and more than happy to join and look at leaf warblers with me. This was a godsend because not only was he great company, he was also much more on the ball with getting recordings and other data about our bird sightings. I couldn't have asked for a better birding trip partner. 

Mapmaking is one of my lesser-known hobbies, so I'm grateful for this opportunity to share my artwork with the world

I left Jakarta the night of September 20, delayed by several hours because, as is apparently customary in Indonesia, the airline decided to cancel my flight at the last minute. Getting to Selayar is no mean feat, as it turns out; there's an airport but flights only run twice a week and can only be booked in person or on an obscure website I'd never heard of before. There is also a bus twice daily from Makassar, the nearest city in South Sulawesi, but apparently it only sometimes runs on the expected schedule. Thankfully, Alex had a contact in Sulawesi, and less than 45 minutes after I first messaged him he had arranged a car to take us from Makassar to the port of Bira, where we could catch a ferry to Selayar. It was an incredible act of generosity for some completely random foreigner who had called him up on WhatsApp, and he even swung by our car in Makassar to bring us some breakfast. Pak Dodo, I still don't entirely know who you are, but thank you for making this harebrained last-minute trip possible. 

I arrived in Makassar at 4AM the morning of September 21, and was met by Ical, the driver Pak Dodo had arranged. We picked Angus up at a hostel nearby, and then started the long drive across the southwestern tip of Sulawesi to Bira. We kept our eyes peeled for Pale-bellied Myna, the mysterious and declining South Sulawesi endemic, but came up empty-handed besides a quick flyby that may have just been an introduced Javan Myna. We did make Ical stop at a fishpond that was full of Pied Stilts, along with several other water birds like Common Greenshank, Common Redshank, Wood Sandpiper, Great-billed Heron, and a surprise Buff-banded Rail. Many Sulawesi Swiftlets were wheeling overhead, my first lifer of the trip. 

Sulawesi Swiftlet

Lovely fishpond scenery

We arrived at Bira port with several hours to spare before the ferry left, so we got lunch in town with Ical, including some nice grilled catfish and coto, the Sulawesi version of Indonesia's famous soup (this particular one was sadly subpar, but we had much better examples later on). South Sulawesi in September is very dry and very hot, so bird activity was minimal although we did see an Olive-backed Sunbird- not a lifer for me then, but a lifer now that it's been split to become Sahul Sunbird. We eventually headed back to the port and got on the ferry, sitting for a while as it filled up an enjoying the multitude of fish hanging out next to the dock. 

The port of Bira as seen from the ferry

A Humbug (Dascyllus aruanus; not my first pick for a fish name) hanging out with Black Longspine Urchin

Crocodile Needlefish

Diamondfish

The ferry finally left the port around 2 in the afternoon, and we started the two-hour journey south to Selayar. The Selayar Strait is fairly deep (enough so that the island has never been connected to Sulawesi, even in the last ice age), but the water was calm and the trip was fairly pleasant. Lots of locals on the ferry struck up conversation with us, as we were I'm sure some of the only bule they'd ever seen trying to visit their island. We did some birding on the ferry journey, picking out several flocks of Red-necked Phalaropes and a trio of distant boobies I'm fairly sure were Red-footed Boobies. We even saw a Mola (Giant Sunfish) shortly after we departed. I was hoping for cetaceans, but saw little except for a single pod of dolphins that appeared for just a few seconds and dove before I could get a picture. As we finally drew near to the port in Selayar there was a flock of Black-naped Terns wheeling over the harbor. 

Red-necked Phalaropes

I think these are Red-footed Boobies, although if anyone wants to make the argument for Masked Booby I'd love to hear it

Great-crested Tern

Black-naped Tern

A Mola (or at least its fin)

The port at Selayar

Once we arrived at the port in Selayar, we found that we were still quite far from our destination. Dodo in Makassar had put us in touch with Ibu Sulvi, a friend of his in Selayar who had a hotel, but it turned out that that was down on the southern end of the island while the port was far to the north. There's a bus running from the port into the town of Peleng, Selayar's capital, but similar to the bus from Makassar it apparently wasn't running that afternoon. Instead we hitched a ride with a local driver and were crammed into an SUV with six other people and all of our bags. In Peleng, Ibu Sulvi arranged for a driver to Quina Paradise Cottage, where we would spend the next two nights. 

As we drove south into the main populated areas of Selayar the first thing that struck us was that the island was... not nearly as remote as we had expected. The roads were nicely paved, the houses were generally big and well-constructed, and all in all it felt like we were in one of the more prosperous parts of Java, not a small island 24 hours of travel away from Jakarta. Apparently Selayar was the site of a powerful kingdom during the Dutch era and before, controlling trade between the Spice Islands and Jakarta, and has managed to do fairly well for itself since then. These days it's known for having high quality horses and water buffaloes, and in the tourist scene is mainly visited for some apparently spectacular diving locations. A good lesson that being off the beaten track for birders doesn't mean it is for everyone else!

I had halfway expected that this trip to a little-known corner of Indonesia would involve days with no electricity or internet, with long hikes up to remote areas. That was very much not to be the case, as we realized when we arrived to our hotel and found ourselves on a gorgeous beach tucked away in a little cove on Selayar's west coast, with our own little bungalow–and the entire beach–to ourselves. It was a surprisingly luxurious spot to come back to after some tough birding sessions.

Just another week of roughing it in the wilds of Indonesia

We met Ibu Sulvi at the hotel, and in our broken Indonesian were able to inquire about dinner and renting motorbikes. She left to go find us bikes to use, and we had a dip in the ocean as the sun set. Bats were flying back and forth over the beach and I was able to get some decent pictures, although I'm not sure I'll ever be able to ID them. We even caught a quick glimpse of a Black-naped Fruit Dove as it darted into the thick coastal vegetation.

If anyone has ID suggestions those would be welcome, although I'm not optimistic from past experience... one reason I struggle to get properly into mammal-watching

The day didn't go entirely without a hitch, as Ibu Sulvi ended up disappearing for hours, and while she was gone the electricity went out, leaving us in the dark with no food, no way to get anywhere, and no good idea of what was going on. Finally Sulvi returned with a motorbike, and someone was able to get the power back on. We headed back toward Peleng to find food, and ended up just getting microwaved rice meals at the local Indomaret convenience store. That was all we needed, though, and we returned to get some sleep so we could explore Selayar in the morning. 

We woke up well before sunrise the next morning, and surprisingly enough had breakfast waiting for us (we seriously did luck out on the accommodations). Sulvi had only been able to procure a single motorbike for us, an old rickety automatic bike with possibly the worst tires I've ever seen. Cramming two very tall bule on it was a risky affair, but we (mostly) managed, and were soon put-putting our way up the hill to find ourselves a leaf warbler. 

The first destination was the spot where James Eaton had first discovered the leaf warbler, and where Alex Berryman re-found it some years later. In fact, as far as I know that was the only spot that any birder had ever seen a Selayar Leaf Warbler up to that point, so it seemed like the obvious place to start. It was a 30-minute motorcycle ride up to the spot, which lay off the road in the hills that make up Selayar's middle section. I parked the bike as close as I could get on the road to the pin Alex had sent, and we half-climbed, half-slid down the steep hillside until we found something approaching a trail. The habitat didn't look like much- mostly a giant coconut plantation with a few native trees left in the middle of it, and even though it was sunrise we could hear precisely zero birds. To make matters worse, I managed to walk straight into a branch that scratched my cornea, leaving my left eye swollen, painful, and mostly useless the rest of the day. If my pictures from this trip look unusually out of focus, it's because I was shooting almost literally blind the whole time! 

Thankfully, my sacrifices weren't for naught: we soon heard a pleasant trilling that we both instantly knew was a Selayar Leaf Warbler! In fact, it was singing from precisely the GPS pin we had been sent, probably even from the same tree it was first discovered in. It turned out to be a pair of birds, and we set about getting pictures and recordings in the terrible lighting, me doing my best even though I could barely see what I was doing. 

"Selayar" Leaf Warbler!

Prime leaf warbler habitat, apparently

We were obviously thrilled; so far as I know this made us the fourth and fifth birders ever to have seen a Selayar Leaf Warbler. Granted that's mostly because other birders make more rational decisions than we do, but I'll take it. We decided to walk around and look for other birds now that we had confirmed that the leaf warblers were still around. Sadly, there was little else to see. We did find a single immature Sulawesi Blue Flycatcher a short distance away, a bird that was a lifer for me and a Selayar-endemic subspecies. We bushwhacked uphill to see if there were more birds further up, and found little in the way of birds besides a single Black-naped Fruit Dove and a flock of Lemon-bellied White-Eyes. A series of keening calls from the forest floor confused us until we realized it was a pair of baby Malayan Civets! I'm not sure if they'd fallen out of a nest or had just been briefly left by a parent, but whatever the reason we quickly left them on their own.

Sulawesi Blue Flycatcher, this one of the Selayar-endemic peromissus subspecies

Baby Malayan Civet

Junonia intermedia, endemic to Sulawesi and surrounding islands

We eventually found ourselves on a small dirt road through the coconut plantation, which was easier going but still had zero birds, even this early in the morning. Higher up it was extremely windy, which made birding a no-go. We did run into a few locals coming through on motorbikes, understandably confused why a pair of bule were walking through a coconut plantation in the middle of nowhere. I'm not sure it my explanation that we were looking for burung made it any less confusing, although one of them very helpfully offered to trap some burung for us (we politely declined). 

It became clear that there were no more birds to be seen there, so we made our way back to the main road and got back on the motorcycle to head to the next site we wanted to explore. The way back included some steep, gravelly hills, and it was here that the motorcycle tires nearly did us in: even descending very slowly, the bike slipped on a bit of loose rock, and I ended up on the ground with a motorcycle on top of me. Angus managed to jump off right as we began to slide, but I got my hand crushed beneath the bike, leaving my pinky finger a bloody mess. I've since learned that the accident fractured several bones in my finger and broke the tip completely off one of them. Two months later and my pinky still hurts if I bend it too far and the joint is still swollen, something the bone doctor tells me is perfectly normal and may take several more months to go away. Great fun!

(I considered posting a rather gory picture of my injured hand here but decided not to)

Thankfully the bike and Angus were both completely unscathed, and my only injuries were a slightly broken finger and some severe road rash. We stopped at the Indomaret down below so I could tend to my various wounds, and then we were once again on our way. The birding continued, and we stopped a couple of times on the way to our next spot, once for a Sulawesi Serpent Eagle perched next to the road, and again for a flock of Grey-rumped Treeswifts.

Sulawesi Serpent Eagle

Grey-rumped Treeswift

The next GPS pin Alex had sent us was a road that ended near the top of the ridge line that forms the spine of Selayar. This was another dodgy uphill ride on the bike, and the road turned from nice pavement to gravel, and then into a single narrow concrete strip wide enough only for a single motorcycle. It was nerve-wracking to navigate especially after having just had one accident, but I was surprised to find that the engine was handling the steep uphill much better than I had expected. As I got to the top of the road, I looked behind me and realized that that was because Angus had fallen off some time back without me realizing, leaving me biking up the hill none the wiser like some kind of Mr. Bean skit. 

I returned downhill to find Angus, and we decided to walk the rest of the way up. That proved to be a good idea, as a Selayar Leaf Warbler was singing right next to the road nearby! A bit further up we happened upon a Rusty-breasted Whistler, this one of the Selayar-endemic teysmanni subspecies that looks wildly different from the Rusty-breasted Whistlers anywhere else in the world. These ones will certainly be split to become Selayar Whistler sometime in the near future, giving the island at least two unrecognized endemics. I struggled to photograph it with my bum eye, but I at least managed some blurry record shots of another very, very rarely-seen bird. There were a few butterflies around, and I even found a spider wasp dragging a paralyzed spider, presumably taking it to its nest to lay eggs in it.

Record shot of a "Selayar" Whistler

Neptis ida

Junonia intermedia

Formosan Swift

Asian Red-tailed Spider Wasp with an unfortunate huntsman spider of some sort

We followed the road as it ran up the ridgeline, heading towards the highest-elevation parts of Selayar. We figured that would have the highest potential of holding more warblers, or potentially other interesting birds. Unfortunately the wind that had started that morning had only gotten stronger, especially here at the apex of the island. We passed through patches of decent forest, but with the branches being whipped around by the wind it was a challenge to hear or see any birds that might have been there. I did, surprisingly, see a small family of Sulawesi Warty Pigs crossing the road, though they disappeared into the bush before I could get anything more than a blurry picture. Big flocks of Lemon-bellied White-eyes passed through, and we had a few migratory Rainbow Bee-eaters flying overhead. I did get another nice lifer in the form of a Sulawesi Myzomela in a tree high above us. 

Sulawesi Myzomela- a sign we're mostly on the other side of the Wallace Line

Lemon-bellied White-eye

Sadly my only record shot of a Sulawesi Warty Pig

Gasteracantha sp.

Swift Peacock Swallowtail

The road along the ridge 

Looking down at the western coast of Selayar

We finally decided to turn around and head back to the bike. On the way back, we finally ran into something we had been hoping for- a mixed feeding flock. We had quickly realized that the bird diversity on Selayar is extremely low, but the birds in the flock were somewhat interesting at least- "Selayar" Whistlers, Sulawesi Myzomela, the endemic subspecies of Sulawesi Blue Flycatcher, Lemon-bellied White-eyes, a Sulawesi-endemic Pale-blue Monarch, and many, many Selayar Leaf Warblers. The leaf warblers aren't much to look at of course, but their feeding behavior is fascinating- creeping up and down tree trunks like nuthatches more than any kind of leaf warbler I'd seen before. It was cool to observe some interesting behavior in one of the least-known birds in the world. 

Selayar Leaf Warbler doing its weird nuthatch-like feeding

Sulawesi Myzomela

Sulawesi Blue Flycatcher

Lemon-bellied White-Eye

It's still unclear to me what squirrels are supposed to be on Selayar- this one looks like a Plantain Squirrel, which aren't known from mainland Sulawesi but perhaps they've been introduced, or inexplicably made it only to Selayar...

Cocoa Black Ants farming aphids

Satisfied with the mixed flock, we returned to the motorbike for another bumpy (but blessedly accident-free) ride downhill to find lunch. We had some disappointingly bad nasi kuning in Padang, then returned to our hotel for a much-needed nap. We spent some time hanging out on the beach after we woke up, enjoying the view and chatting with Ibu Sulvi drinking from freshly-picked coconuts. The sort of birding adventure I could stand to do more of...

There was still daylight left to go birding, and that's what we did. I had spent some time looking at Google Earth and identified a promising-looking road on the southern part of the island, somewhat closer to our hotel. There's quite a bit of good-quality forest on the far southern part of Selayar, but Alex Berryman had spent a morning there in 2020 and seen zero leaf warblers, leading him to speculate that they're only above 200 meters above sea level or so. This road didn't quite get to that elevation, but it did look like it led to some decent habitat.

The drive south took us along more of Selayar's surprisingly nice paved roads, then uphill through coconut and then cashew plantations- the latter being the new cash crop on Selayar. I parked the bike on the last bit of paved road, and then we walked uphill along a nice little wooded valley as the sun started to set. We heard a dove calling, and soon realized it was a Flores Sea Cuckoo-Dove, one of our other major targets. The cuckoo-doves are endemic to just a few small islands south of Sulawesi, so it was nice to see this one here. Some Glossy Swiftlets were wheeling overhead, and a Slender-billed Crow flew over with a fledgling bird of some sort in its beak. 

Flores Sea Cuckoo-Dove, another extremely range-restricted endemic

Glossy Swiftlet- this used to be considered the same species as the Ridgetop and Grey-rumped Swiftlets in the Philippines, but by swiftlet standards they look shockingly different

Slender-billed Crow with an unfortunate small bird of some sort- perhaps a young Short-tailed Starling?

We quickly realized that the habitat at this site was far better than any we'd been at before, but unfortunately the light was fading so we didn't have much time for birding. Still, we decided to stay until after dark in hopes of some interesting night birds or mammals. I saw a nice male Sulawesi Blue Flycatcher in the fading light, and Large-tailed Nightjars soon started calling. 

Sulawesi Blue Flycatcher

Plantain Squirrel?

Suddenly Angus shouted out "Tarsier!" I rushed over to where he was and sure enough, there was a tiny, bug-eyed tarsier staring down at us from a cashew tree! We set about taking as many photos as we could, not knowing exactly which species is found on Selayar. As we found out later, the species here is Spectral Tarsier (Tarsius tarsier), a mammal lifer for both of us. Up until recently, it was thought that there were only three species of tarsier worldwide: Philippine Tarsier in the southern Philippines, Horsfield's Tarsier in Borneo and Sumatra, and Spectral Tarsier on Sulawesi and surrounding islands. Recently though, research came out showing that "Spectral Tarsier" is actually a complex of at least a dozen species all around Sulawesi. The only true Spectral Tarsiers are actually endemic to Selayar, making this a very special observation indeed- the first iNaturalist observation of a Spectral Tarsier sensu stricto.

Spectral Tarsier!!

Thrilled with our tarsier find, we headed back to the hotel where Ibu Sulvi had dinner prepared for us. We had to leave the hotel by 9 the next morning in order to make the ferry back to Sulawesi, but we decided to make the most of our limited time on the island and return to the road we had just visited to see what other birds it might have. 

The first birds we saw when we arrived at sunrise the next morning were Hair-crested Drongos- dozens of them in fact. The Hair-crested Drongos on Sulawesi have white eyes, and these were presumably of that subspecies, although Angus got several recordings and after some review they seem to have somewhat different vocalizations from the ones on mainland Sulawesi. It's always hard to tell with drongos of course, and their taxonomy is a confused mess, but it was still a cool find and observation. It was also fun to watch them do drongo things, swooping around and catching small insects in a flowering tree.

The Selayar form of Hair-crested Drongo

Shortly after sunrise, we were surprised to hear the warbling trill of a Selayar Leaf Warbler! This was only about 120 meters above sea level, below their hypothesized lower limit, but apparently they're not as picky as expected as long as they can find some decent hill forest. This proved to be another territorial pair- and indeed all of our observations except for the mixed flock the previous day had been of singing pairs. Given that one pair had been seen in the same tree three times in a space of six years, it might be that adult birds are extremely faithful to whatever their tiny territory is. I was just happy to be able to properly see these birds, now that my eye was mostly healed up.

Species differences in Phylloscopus warblers are uh, subtle to say the least, but apparently Selayar Leaf Warbler differs from its closest relatives on Sulawesi by its olive-green upperparts, very broad crown stripe, long supercilium, unmarked ear coverts, whitish underparts, and possibly a larger bill

There were some other interesting birds as the morning went on. A pair of Grey-cheeked Green Pigeons flew in briefly, and we saw a few Blue-cheeked Flowerpeckers, a bird I'd just seen for the first time on Lombok. Lots of birds flew over, including flocks of Short-tailed Starlings and Rainbow Bee-Eaters and a Sulawesi Serpent-Eagle. Angus managed to find a couple of the local form of Olive-backed Sunbirds (now Sahul Sunbirds), likely at the very least deserving of subspecies status, and was even able to get the first-ever recordings of their call. As we walked back toward the bike we found a few "Selayar" Rusty-breasted Whistlers, although I was still only able to get bad record shots. 

Female "Selayar" Sahul Sunbird

Selayar Whistler

Immature Blue-cheeked Flowerpecker

Rainbow Bee-Eater

Grenadier

Some kind of damselfly

Spotted Grass Dart

Some kind of jumping spider

We returned to our hotel where we gathered our stuff then hitched a ride in a car all the way to the ferry terminal. As we waited for the ferry to depart, we had great looks at the local Black-naped Terns, as well as a quartet of Green Sea Turtles foraging in the harbor. The sea journey to Bira was fairly uneventful with fewer birds than the last time. It was also spent mostly engulfed in a cloud of cigarette smoke- definitely my least favorite part about traveling in Indonesia. 

Black-naped Tern

Green Sea Turtle!

Indo-Pacific Sergeant Major feeding on bread crumbs

From Bira we got on another car all the way back to Makassar, where we spent the next couple of days doing some Sulawesi birding. Our time in Selayar was not, uh, without its mishaps but it still ended up being one of my favorite birding trips of the year. Exploring under-birded areas is my favorite type of birding, and when you add poorly-known and even undescribed endemics to the mix, well, that's all I need to have a good time. We had also managed to get the most extensive documentation yet of the mysterious leaf warblers and (perhaps more importantly) confirm that they're fairly secure for now conservation-wise. Obviously there still needs to be work done on Selayar to protect what little forest remains, but the leaf warbler seems to be perfectly at home and fairly numerous even in disturbed forest. That said, the fact that they also seem to be pretty faithful to small territories means that any further deforestation could threaten them. Leaf warblers aside, we'd also managed to see all of Selayar's other endemic birds, and get pictures and recordings of several others that will hopefully help them to be officially split as new subspecies in the future. All in all not bad for a 3-day trip!