I've been away for a while.Not just away, but far away, as in the other side of the planet. I was on a birding trip to Papua New Guinea and, my friends, it was the trip of a lifetime.
Over the next few weeks and months, I'll be sharing some of my experiences in PNG with you here at Bill of the Birds. Eventually I hope to create both a magazine article for Bird Watcher's Digest and a podcast episode for "This Birding Life."
For now I'll start things off with one of my favorite images (above) from the trip. It's me wearing all my birding gear, including my leech socks, standing next to a Huli wigman in the southern highlands near Tari. He told me, as we walked across his land, that his name was simply "Warrior." Warrior helped to guide us to the roost tree of a sooty owl—just one of the nearly 300 species we saw during the three week trip.
It's always a magical thing to be some place that's completely different from what I'm accustomed to—different people, landscape, language, customs, food, and, yes, different birds. PNG qualifies with flying colors on all counts.
More to come about Warrior, and all the people, places, and birds of Papua New Guinea.