My Animals, and Other Animals by Bill Bailey

Author:Bill Bailey [Bailey, Bill]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Entertainment & Performing Arts, Personal Memoirs, Humor, Topic, Animals, Pets, General, Nature, Wildlife
ISBN: 9781529436167
Google: mxj8EAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Hachette UK
Published: 2024-10-09T14:00:00+00:00

Chapter 19

Birdwatching in Seram

Seram is a large island in the Moluccan Archipelago in Eastern Indonesia, known locally as Nusa Ina, ‘Mother Island’. It’s the largest island in the Maluku province and contains a huge amount of bird species that can be seen nowhere else on Earth. At about 6,600 square miles in size, a bit bigger than Yorkshire, it’s teeming with life. It’s also the home island of our very own Molly, the Moluccan cockatoo (chapter 21 is all about Molly). This, in part, was the reason we were skimming over a glassy sea in a speedboat from the regional capital, Ambon. Our plan was to trek into the forest, be hoisted 120 feet up onto a viewing platform, then wake up to the dawn chorus in the forest canopy …

Our travel companions were a mix of friends we’ve made over our many adventures through Indonesia. On this occasion, our main point of contact and tour guide was the estimable Djuna, a Californian potholer, caver and photographer, and it was she who had set up these viewing platforms on Seram. This could not have been easy, getting local bird-trappers to turn into bird guides, but such is her calm, persuasive manner, that is exactly what she had done. Using her caving experience she’d figured out a safe way to hoist guests and birders up to the platform.

The first challenge was just getting there. From Jakarta we flew to Ambon, a bustling market city spilling over with sights and sounds and smells. The spice markets are a thing of wonder, a vivid palette of colour and taste from where so many exotic flavours made their way to the tables of Europe during the Dutch colonial days. It’s also a transport hub where the huge passenger ferries, vast lumbering PELNI ships with names like the Bukit Siguntang and Rinjani, named after the mountains of Indonesia, connect all points east.

Up to around the fifteenth century, Seram was under the authority of the Sultan of Ternate, based on Halmahera Island to the north. Christian missions run by the Portuguese started appearing in the sixteenth century, and in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the island came under the control of the Dutch, as part of their Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie – the Dutch East India Company or the VOC for short. The population is a mix of Christian and Muslim. In one part of town you can hear the call to prayer, in another, Christmas carols being sung, but it hasn’t always been a peaceful co-existence. In 1998, sectarian violence swept through Maluku and the neighbouring islands, causing many deaths and huge amounts of displacement. Since the Malino Accord in 2002, though, things have returned to normal and a peaceful state of affairs has prevailed.

Seram is not a long hop from the regional capital Ambon, so a speedboat was enough to get us there, followed by a trip by car around the island to our first waypoint, the village of Sawai and a homestay built on stilts looking out over a turquoise lagoon, ringed by a reef.

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