Lombok personal birding guide and report

Some months ago I put an RFI on Birding-Aus for information regarding a bird guide for Lombok.

I got no replies to my RFI, but I did get requests asking for me to on forward any detail I received, thus I submit this report for the Birding-Aus archives.

My research took me to several tour reports of the region, but not specifically to a Lombok guide.

The only reference I could find to a Lombok based guide was on a Facebook page called Birding Lombok-Sumbawa, who offered guiding services.

I emailed them six weeks before departure and didn’t receive a reply until I was already in Bali and a few days away from Lombok. They apologised for the delay in responding offering an explanation, and asking if I would still like to go ahead. I was provided with a proposed itinerary and a fee for services. I accepted the proposal and replied with a list of my target birds.

The guide is Saleh Amin known as Ali. He speaks English, but it is not strong. However much better than my Indonesian.

There was no other contact until I was picked up from my hotel at 5:30 on the agreed day.

We drove for 90 minutes to Steady Mountains Nature Reserve where we could immediately hear the Elegant Pitta calling. There are cliffs nearby [not unlike the Port Campbell area of Victoria] where we searched for White-tailed Tropicbird and Spotted Kestrel. We got seven Tropicbirds but no kestrels were out today.

Other birds of note in the park were Lesser Coucal, Blue-eared Flowerpecker, Rufous-chested Flycatcher and Rufous/Arafura Fantail which seems out of described range.

After lunch we drove to the Lembar area, about an hour away and where we got the Cerulean Kingfisher as soon as we stepped out of the car. A further drive of an hour took us to the Mataram University where we found the Scaly-crowned Honeyeater ‘in the usual tree’.

Back in the car for a further one hour drive to Kerandangan Nature Conservation Park. We scoured the area within 500 metres of the entrance gate for two hours and got about six birds, and none were our targets. There had been heavy rain and light rain was still falling, so this may be the reason for so few birds.

We settled down for half just prior to nightfall, and almost straight away the Rinjani Scops Owl started to call, as did the Large-tailed Nightjar. It took 90 minutes before we would get first views of the owl and we were able to observe it for about 10 minutes. At least two other Rinjani Scops Owls were calling nearby. The day finished after 15 hours.

In summary we dipped on quite a few of the targets [that’s birding], however they were Ali’s targets. As far as I could tell through broken English most of the birds on my list could only be achieved by multiple days in the field and camping at remote locations. Sadly this was not made clear on the day. I still achieved more in one day that I would have on my own.

Would I recommend Ali’s services? It really is up the individual, and what they want to get out of the trip. In my case it certainly would have been better if I could have discussed and agreed potential birds, rather than follow his set tour before I had arrived. There is a lot of driving involved [downtime] and we only covered a small part of the island.

From discussions with Ali I learned that he has written a book on the birds of Wallacia to be published in October 2016 in the Indonesian language. He is involved in trapping and studying birds in conjunction with a UK professor and does regular bird studies and reports. He impressed as intelligent and knowledgeable, but due to the language barrier could come across as aloof.

We ended up with 31 birds for the day. Not I would have thought a significant number for a tropical location, especially compared to Bali three years ago where I got 45 and 54 on consecutive days.

Notes about birding on Lombok: There are some wonderful birds to be found on Lombok, however they are very difficult to find and bird trapping has exacerbated this. In a general sense there are few birds on Lombok compared to say Bali where travelling on rural roads you see egrets and herons in the rice paddies. On Lombok I doubt I saw five of each.

Iian Denham
Melbourne