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Published: September 4th 2010
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male cloven-feathered dove (Drepanoptila holosericea)
one of my favourite New Caledonian birds. This photo was taken at the Noumea Zoo By the next day when I left for Farino the rain had all cleared away which was good as I had a lot of walking to do. No tourist travels by the local buses in New Caledonia, they all hire cars and it soon became obvious why -- the buses don't go anywhere near the places you want to get to! To get to Farino without a car you first take a bus to a little town called La Foa -- although you can get the driver to drop you off a bit further on at the Fonwharry junction a couple of kilometres past La Foa -- and from there you have to get a further 5 or 6km to Farino, and then to the Refuge de Farino which is another few kilometres further on from there. It doesn't sound far but most of the distance is uphill, its very hot, and of course you've got all your gear on your back so its pretty slow going. Hitching is supposed to be easy in New Caledonia, but not on this day. I walked for a long time before what must surely have been the hottest girl in the country stopped to
give me a lift. On the plus side of the walk was that I saw a New Caledonian crow (you may think a crow isn't very exciting but the New Caledonian ones have funny-shaped beaks: so there!). I also started up rusa deer several times. These are very common introduced animals in New Caledonia and they don't seem overly shy. The campground at the Refuge de Farino is a good place to stay -- only about NZ$14 per night to pitch your tent, which is cheap for this country. I set up house in light drizzle while horned parakeets and cloven-feathered doves played in the surrounding trees. These were two of my most-wanted birds in New Caledonia. I had first heard of the cloven-feathered dove from reading a book called "Rare Birds Of The World" by Guy Mountfort and Norman Arlott back in 1989. There was a fabulous painting of a male cloven-feathered dove in the book and it instantly became one of those animals that jammed itself into my memory as a species I wanted to see one day. In fact it was
the bird I most wanted to see when here, even overshadowing the kagu which is the
horned parakeet (Eunymphicus cornutus)
photo taken at the Noumea Zoo as the wild birds are too uncooperative. The name Eunymphicus roughly translates as "better than a cockatiel" bird that most birders go to New Caledonia for. The dove is a stunning bird, brilliant green with a yellow belly, white stripes across the wings and tail as if its been sitting on a freshly-painted park bench, and ridiculous pompoms of white feathers on each leg like a high-class bantam. They aren't the easiest bird to actually see although they are very easy to hear as they sit hidden in the canopy droning out their monotonous "oow oow oow" like little green foghorns.
Once the tent was up I set off for the 8km walk to the hopefully-bird-filled forest of the Parc des Grandes Fougeres. Along the road I saw more New Caledonian birds such as myzomelas, friarbirds and other funny-named things. Also along the way were my first experiences with New Caledonian dogs. These are NOT pleasant! Almost everywhere I walked in New Caledonian I was threatened and several times physically attacked by dogs. I dislike dogs at the best of times, and I was pretty much freaked out for half of my trip. It really did put a severe dampner on my enjoyment of the holiday! There are no licensing laws here, no vaccinations, no leash
striated starling (Aplonis striata)
endemic bird that was common at Farino, although this photo was taken later at the Noumea Zoo laws, nothing. There are so many dogs that you regularly see them dead on the main roads. No-one cleans up the carcasses so they range from the freshly-killed all the way through to simply greasy smears of fur and bones flattened into the tarseal by hundreds of passing vehicles. The dogs here have real split personalities. When you're walking along a road one will come running out of a property barking its head off at you, but its tail is wagging so you think "no problem" and go to continue on past in a carefully casual fashion, and that's when it comes at you, snarling and jaws chomping and you have to beat it off with your bag -- but all the while its tail is still wagging away! Its like its got an angry deranged brain in its head and a happy brain in its tail. The worst times were when three or four dogs would come out of a property all together and circle me, snarling and foaming.These aren't small dogs either: one at Farino (luckily confined behind a fence) was by my estimation the size of a horse; it could have bitten my face off without even lifting its front paws off the ground. In various human cultures the same gesture can mean completely opposite things -- eg, in some cultures shaking one's head means "no" whereas in another it means "yes"; a hand gesture that means goodbye in Western cultures means "come here" in Thailand -- so I have formulated a theory regarding the tail-wagging attack-dogs which says that dogs also have cultural gestures that differ from country to country. New Caledonian dogs are in effect behaving like cats by wagging their tails when they are angry. Dogs are stupid.
Once past the 2km-long dog section of the walk and onto the 6km unpaved road leading up to the park, I got in sightings of New Caledonian whistler, red-throated parrotfinch, brown goshawk and long-tailed triller (those are all birds, just so you know). The park itself was already closed by the time I got there, as I had known it would be; I was merely trying out the walk for time. Did I mention today was my birthday? Nine "new" species (ones I'd never seen before) was a nice present. Cloven-feathered dove was a way better bird to see for the first time on my birthday than a kagu would have been.
All of the next day was spent in the Parc des Grandes Fougeres. There is a tale in this land of an imaginary bird called the New Caledonian grassbird which is said to live in areas of rough grass and bracken in open patches within forest. One such patch is in the Parc des Grandes Fougeres. Because the bird is imaginary I did not see it but I did see New Caledonian flycatcher, Melanesian cuckoo-shrike, streaked fantail and yellow-bellied robin, none of which were imaginary at all. Overall though there didn't seem to be many birds of any kind around in the park that day, it was just one of those quiet days.
Although I hadn't managed to find the grassbird or a couple of other species I was interested in, I decided not to revisit the park on the third day. The dogs had just got too much for me. I had planned to just wander round the vicinity of the Refuge and spot birds in the trees there, but another storm chose to blow through in the night. It rained and rained and rained all of the day, so I basically just sat in my tent to avoid the waterfalls dropping out of the sky, hoping the tent wouldn't end up sliding into the nearby river, and did absolutely nothing. It got so bad that all the other campers packed up and drove off, until all that were left were me and an Australian/New Caledonian family. That night their tent caved in and freezing water cascaded through onto them so they also left. They abandoned the potatoes they had baking in the embers of their campfire so after they'd gone I furtively scavenged them like a dog; it may not be dignified but that's what you've got to do to survive in New Caledonia. The one new animal for the day were several fish in the nearby stream that I believe to be
Awaous guamensis I got back to Noumea quite easily the next morning with a ride from near the Refuge to La Foa with a gentleman who had five words of English to go with my five words of French, and then a further ride to Noumea with a huge dreadlocked Kanak easily twice my size who spoke not a jot of English but did set a new land-speed record for reaching the capital.
Funny observation number two: in New Caledonia "hitch-hiking" is called "auto-stop"!
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