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Published: August 20th 2007
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Robyn fishing
(note the plastic Coke bottle in her hand, which is her "fishing gear") There were still no golden doves to be found in the forest the next morning, or much else (but I'd pretty much got most of what I was after the day before anyway so that was alright). When we got back to Raintree, Robyn went fishing. There was a sign at the counter saying that if you could catch a fish in the lake then they would cook it for you for free. If it sounds like there might be a catch you'd be right. The fishing line was just a length of cord tied to an empty coke bottle, there was no sinker, the bait was an old piece of bread, the double-hulled wooden canoe provided was leaking so badly that there were actually small fish living inside it, and finally Tilapia don't really take hooks anyway, they just nibble the bait away (especially if it's soggy bread!). Nevertheless, Robyn was determined. So determined, in fact, that she stole the inflatable dinghy and went out in that in preference to the canoe.
She caught no fish.
The next day we bused off to Nausori airport to catch a plane to Kadavu, a smallish island to the southeast of
Kadavu shining parrot (Prosopeia splendens)
this one is a captive bird obviously, but gives you an idea of how colourful they are Viti Levu. We were wondering how many people were going to be on the flight. The lounge was full (that is, there were about twenty people in it) but most turned out to be waiting on passengers from other flights. In the end there were only three people on the Kadavu plane, and two of them were me and Robyn. The plane itself only had eight seats. It looked like a matchbox toy. I discovered that I prefer tiny local planes to big international ones. Either way you're going to die if they crash, so better in a fun plane then a crowded commercial one.
Kadavu is a regular destination for birders, divers, and probably nobody else. There are four endemic birds on the island: the Kadavu shining parrot, Kadavu fantail, Kadavu honeyeater, and the whistling dove. The birders generally stay at either Biana's Accommodation or Reece's Place (apparently now called Nakuita Resort, but nobody on Kadavu knew it by that name). We tried Biana's first but they were fully booked by a group from the University of the South Pacific (the USP) in Suva. Biana helpfully put a call through to Reece's Place and organised a room there,
but we would have to wait for high-tide because Reece's Place was situated on an offshore island called Galoa. Robyn put the wait to good use by going to sleep. I put it to better use by going birding.
The Kadavu honeyeater proved to be easy to find. There was one sitting with a collared lory in a coconut tree right outside on the street. I found an old logging track with forest either side in which I found shining parrots, but the fantail and whistling dove remained unseen, despite several doves calling persistantly from all around.
The chap who ran Reece's Place came along later in the afternoon to pick us up. His name, apparently, was Humphrey Bogart. Reece's Place is awesome. The bures (rooms) are set in a coconut grove. You have to be careful not to get beaned by falling coconuts (they hit the ground HARD!), but the air is filled with clouds of collared lories. Instead of geckoes in the rooms there were skinks. With no mongooses on Kadavu there are skinks everywhere. Just down by the beach are the burrows of huge land crabs but you have to be sneaky to actually see
the crabs themselves because they're pretty shy. On the downside there is no electricity. You have to make do with a kerosene lamp at night.
We went for a wander along the beach and fossicked in the rockpools. Highlight of the day was a baby zebra moray.
The next day was absolutely pouring down with rain. Robyn couldn't go out for her first dive of the trip, partly because of the weather, partly because she wasn't feeling so good. I went out but found few birds, certainly not a fantail or whistling dove. The weather cleared up later so we headed across to the adjacent mainland with a friend of our hosts on whose property the whistling doves were common. A green turtle was seen on the way. All the birding groups that stay at Reece's Place go to this forest and all of them find the doves easily. Not today. Our guide was obviously embarrassed by the deafening silence that reigned in the forest. "Normally there are doves all over the place here," he said. We believed him, we just knew it was due to my birding curse. It was the first time he'd EVER not found
any whistling doves. As we headed back through the forest in the gathering gloom of dusk he did actually see one. Robyn was just behind him and saw some sort of bird disappear into the trees. I was a few metres back trying to get up a mud bank without falling on my face, so I saw nothing. On the up side, we did see a couple of the fantails.
The next morning was my last chance before we had to fly back to Viti Levu and on to Taveuni. This time my guide was the six year old son of yesterday's guide. I got all the head-height spiderwebs because he was too short to get them first, and he basically just walked right under fallen logs that I would have to clamber over top of. It was like Chewbacca being led by an Ewok. He kept finding birds sitting motionless in thickets of leaves exactly the same size, shape and colour as the bird. He'd point and I'd be like, "Where?". He must have thought I was completely blind. Anyway, we found a female whistling dove so it was all good.
Then it was a flight back
to Nausori airport and straight off from there to Taveuni in the north.
Best animals of Kadavu: the four endemic birds of course, collared lories, and lesser frigatebirds.
Robyn's favourites: the various skinks, and all the crabs and other marinelife in the rockpools.
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mere
non-member comment
nice
Look nice