Birding advice: enroll the children!

It turns out that the woman who was paddled out to greet us is Susan, the wife of the chief. The chief is in Luganville. It appears that he is always in Luganville and Susan is the de facto kastom chief. She noted my binoculars and wondered at what I was looking. Birds. Why do you want to look at birds? We like to see their colors and learn their names. If that's the case, come to my village and behind we have every kind of bird. She enrolled her grandchildren to be spotters and they were excellent. Once they were onto a bird, they stopped and pointed right at it until we got there and could see it. Susan was a woman on a mission and just kept going farther and farther into the jungle. We trekked over hill and dale and slippery slopes and mud and vines and rocks following Susan who was trying to keep up with the energetic and agile children. In addition to the usual, we saw the Metallic Pigeon, the Pacific Imperial Pigeon, the Cardinal Myzomela and the Rainbow Lorikeet. She knew all the calls and if she heard a bird she could describe the bird. She could call in the doves and pigeons. No Spotless Crake. We gave Susan 2 litres of petrol and everyone was happy.

We returned to Sunrise and received visitors until well after dark. They brought what they had as gifts and we are overflowing with pawpaw (papaya), choco (cocoa pods), watercress, nuts, soursop, bananas, oranges, pamplemousse, kumalas, coconuts for eating and different coconuts for drinking.

At the moment we are anchored in Waterfall Bay on Vanua Lava in the Banks Group of Islands of Vanuatu. Beautiful and much going on onshore but we are laying low and so far we've had no visitors.

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