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Published: August 21st 2007
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Male orange dove (Chrysoenas victor)
this is the one at Kula Eco-park so you can actually see what they look like The principal town of Taveuni is Matei, sited on the very northernmost tip of the island. It is in fact more a collection of resorts than a real town. And it appears to be devoted largely to housing the bane of planet Earth, American tourists. Not the kind of American tourists people don't mind, the really irritating obnoxious kind that everybody hates. Other than that it's probably a very nice place. We stayed at Tovutovu Resort which was excellent. There were big oceanic geckoes in the room and big cane toads outside.
Robyn finally got to go out on a dive. While she was doing that I was going to go to the Lavena Coastal Walk further down the east coast. I had been told there were two buses a day and there would be a two hour gap between them. The first bus was on a Fiji schedule. It was due to arrive some time between 9.30 and 10; instead it got there at 10.30. The last bus back was at one. As it turned out the only days with two buses were Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Today was Friday. The only bus was the one I was already
on. I had to return to Matei on the same bus I went in on and saw nothing more interesting than Australian magpies, introduced to the Taveuni coconut plantations to control stick insects, probably by a descendant of the same genius that introduced the mongoose to control rats on the other islands.
There were some really irritating American tourists on the ride in. Every time the bus stopped they would be clicking away with their cameras at everything they saw. They would take photos of the people getting off the bus, and of the people standing at the bus stops a couple of feet from the side of the bus. The Fijian kids would act like kids always do, but the adults just stood in stony-faced silence. Eventually I'd had enough of them and went over and told them it was extremely rude to take photos of Fijians without seeking permission first. "Oh we were told it was alright so long as we stayed on the bus," was the dumbfounding reply. They were acting as if they were on a trip to the zoo. At the very least its just a matter of simple courtesy; they wouldn't act like
that at home and they wouldn't want tourists pulling up outside their own house and start taking photos of them, so why treat the local people of Fiji like animals?
At the end of the day Robyn and I went beachcombing, and found two baby morays hiding under seaweed mats.
On Saturday I once again headed back down the east coast, this time to a village called Vidawa. This part of the coast had been declared a national park and marine reserve. Quite commendably the local villages here have decided to protect their forests and reefs instead of destroying them. They are planning on setting up a backpackers outfit in the area which should work out well as the only places to stay otherwise are up at Matei and the bus system is rudimentary and taxis very expensive. At Vidawa there is a guided walk through the forest called the Vidawa Rainforest Hike (in general all land in Fiji is privately owned so you can't just go wandering about where-ever you like by yourself). This walk is what many birders do, because it is the best and easiest way of seeing Taveuni's specialities the orange dove and silktail.
Red shining parrot (Prosopeia tabuensis)
this one is at the Kula Eco-park, but is similar to the ones I saw in the wild The alternative is a trip up Des Voeux Peak from the west coast but that is more expensive to get to and not as convenient. The orange dove is related to the whistling and golden doves. The silktail is a small black flycatcher with blue spangling and white on the tail.
My guide was named Pela. Lots of doves in the forest he assured me. Many of them had been calling that morning. After my troubles with trying to see the whistling dove and failing to see the golden dove, I wasn't actually too surprised that there were no orange doves calling anywhere once we got into the forest. However my fears proved on this occasion to be unfounded. We quite quickly found a young male, largely green with a few small blobs of orange. It was an orange dove but not a full-coloured male, and the whole point of seeing an orange dove is for it to be orange not green. Fortunately by the end of the day we had seen two full males as well as two females. Their call sounds like water dripping into a metal pan; its very unusual. The male orange dove is stupidly
Oceanic gecko (Gehyra oceanica), meeting Robyn
you can see it has lost its tail at some stage, and is growing a new one colourful. They look like little balls of molten lava sitting in the trees. When you see one glowing in the forest it takes your breath away. The orange dove is now my all-time favourite bird.
The silktails likewise made a welcome appearance but the red shining parrots that I was also wanting to see remained elusive. They should have been in the village but they weren't. So the next day both Robyn and I returned to Bouma, just down the road from Vidawa, to visit the Tavoro waterfalls. I was pretty sure I'd be able to find some shining parrots there and I was right. Robyn had fun playing with baby cane toads (because she was too afraid to handle the big ones at Tovutovu in case they poisoned her). She formed a swim club for one of them with a freshwater crab, some prawns and some little fish. Today was also my birthday, but we didn't remember...
Best animals of Taveuni: orange dove, no contest. I've wanted to see one ever since I was a wee lad, and now I have. Runner-up positions to silktail, red shining parrot, baby morays.
Robyn's favourite Taveuni animals: cane toads; the
oceanic gecko that bit her; land hermits.
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Divey Spidey
Robyn W
Yay
Go cane toad swim club! I love the gecko photo, he just looks so happy. Even though he's probably irate due to you throwing my top at him...