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 m...