MADANG PROVINCE, PNG — The first sound I heard was a single note, repeated slowly and steadily. I tried to concentrate on it but drifted back to sleep. Light came before 6 a.m., and I began to hear a strange and wonderful chorus of birdsong, punctuated by the crowing of roosters. The dawn chorus did not seem to include more than five or six different species, and most of the calls were simple and repetitive.

I walked outside and saw a little bird dart overhead. I wondered if it was a sunbird, but all I had seen was a silhouette. The sun illuminated a drift of orange-flowered trees on the far ridge. I walked over to an east-facing balcony that overlooks the sea far below. A large bird perched in a dead branch, silhouetted against the bright sky. I raised my binoculars and saw a beautiful chestnut raptor with a pure white head and breast. After a moment, it flew away.

Then the camp doctor came around the corner and started telling me about nesting frogmouths he had seen from the balcony. He took my binoculars just as a pair of long-necked, long-billed birds flew into the tree the raptor had just vacated. Augh! The frogmouths weren’t there, and the doctor told me they were in the owl family as he took me into the office to show me a taxidermy specimen. I was surprised by the bird’s size, but it wasn’t a stuffed one that interested me. I thanked him and returned to the balcony.

The large, long-billed birds returned, calling loudly. I recognized them as friarbirds from my previous study, but I didn’t know the species. The pair stuck together, and when one called, the other would fly to join it. Their call had a loud, ringing quality, and they threw back their heads to deliver it. I imagined the slow phrases as, “pap-u-a gui-nea, pap-u-a gui-nea.” The birds were backlit by the rising sun, but as far as I could tell they were plain brown with heavy, decurved bills that did not have knobs.

I had brief looks at a kingfisher and at a gray bird that I thought might be a cuckoo-shrike. The kingfisher moved through the shrubs below quickly. It had a blue back and cap with light underparts. The gray bird perched in the same dead limb that the raptor and the friarbirds had visited, and it flicked its wings as it sat there. It seemed to have a black mask, but the backlighting made it very difficult to see much. A dark, harrier-like raptor flew through the valley below. Then it was time for breakfast.

Later in the morning, I met a white-haired man with a European accent that I did not recognize. He wore a nametag that read, “Jouko.” He too mentioned the frogmouths, and he took me into his house to look up their picture in the field guides. He told me they were in the nightjar family. He pronounced it “nightyar.” He got his binoculars from the cupboard, and we went out to look for the frogmouths. I hoped he’d have better luck than the doctor. At least he knew which order they were in.

As we walked along the ridge, we spotted a small kettle of dark, long-tailed raptors soaring together like Turkey Vultures. Jouko told me they were Black Kites. He said they were very common and that they are identified by their forked tails. That must have been what I saw flying through the valley earlier. There was another raptor with them; it looked more like a Buteo and had light patterning on the underwings. But the glare was so bad I decided to cut my losses and follow Jouko.

It was no use, though; the frogmouths were gone. It sounded as if they had been there very recently. Maybe they will come back. As we walked, Jouko asked me if it’d seen a particular bird. I couldn’t understand its name, so I said no. As he continued to describe it — he moved his hand back and forth in imitation of its tail — I thought it sounded like the black-and-white bird I’d seen yesterday. And I finally understood the name: Willie Wagtail. Jouko said, “Villie Vagtail.” It’s nice to have found another birder already!

He was right about the Black Kites. I saw them frequently throughout the day. Their call is a descending screech, somewhat softer than that of a Red-tailed Hawk.

In the afternoon, we careened down the mountainside to a resort on the coast. I brought my binocs of course but didn’t see much besides a few silhouettes flying from tree to tree. I was surprised by the lack of beach, and I was surprised that the resort was located on an inlet instead of on the open sea. Vegetation ran down to the water, more or less, and there wasn’t really any sand. The water was beautiful, and I snorkeled out to the coral reef.

I hadn’t snorkeled much before, and I had to keep reminding myself not to panic and suck in saltwater. I could finally see all the spectacular fish, corals, and associated animals that I’ve seen in aquariums and on TV all my life. A clownfish nestled in an anemone; schools of bright blue fish darted over coral; strange brightly-colored creatures waved in the current; and I thought one large, multicolored fish might be a parrotfish.

I hoped for frigatebirds or tropicbirds or something, but the skies (when I was looking that direction) were empty. There was a large enclosure near the parking area that contained a pair of Eclectus Parrots, a pair of Sulphur-crested Cockatoos, and several crowned pigeons. The psittacids screeched horribly but were beautiful. The crowned pigeons were huge — considerably larger than chickens — and spectacular with red eyes and white-tipped crown feathers. I’d really love to see them in the wild.

Later in the evening, I was walking under a tree when a small bird near the top caught my eye. Thankfully my binocs were at hand, and I raised them to see a sunbird with a yellow belly, olive back, and black throat. He was singing; the song was a buzzy warble followed by a trill.

From another vantage point, I watched a small black bird in the fruit of a palm. It had a decurved bill like a sunbird, but I’m not sure whether that’s what it was. It was blue-green on the shoulder; I couldn’t tell whether the color was iridescence or whether it was a patch of color. Swifts flew over the canyon too. They seemed fairly large and held their wings slightly downward when gliding, so they looked like roof peaks instead of bows. I couldn’t make out any color on them, though one looked pale below when it banked.

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