MADANG PROVINCE, PNG — Today was exciting, but it was frustrating too.

It started with a small passerine that I couldn’t ever get a good look at. It stayed in foliage far away and was backlit by the morning sun. I could tell it was something I hadn’t seen before, but that’s where I had to leave things.

Both species of sunbird were active and conspicuous below the office balcony. A female Black Sunbird worked a bush right under where I stood. She hovered frequently and stayed in the open, affording me good looks at her gray hood, yellow belly, and strong bill. Later, a pair of Olive-backed Sunbirds flitted around a different bush, and I saw them flick long, hummingbird-like tongues out of their sickle-shaped bills.

After breakfast and before class, I went outside to “study” my Tok Pisin. Of course, I was soon distracted. I heard unfamiliar calls from some treetops; I didn’t think they were sunbirds. A little bird flew over my head, and I realized the callers were psittacids. Alert, alert! They were small — about the size of a chunky bluebird — with very short tails. I saw a couple flying around. Those in the trees were badly backlit and stayed hidden in the leaves. They seemed mostly green with some red around the face and/or bill. They eventually moved on, and I turned back to face the canyon.

Several swifts were flying over the canyon — the swifts I still haven’t identified. I thought one had a white rump, and as I followed them around in my binocs, I came across a huge, very strange-looking bird. Adrenaline surged.

It took me a moment to realize it was a dove. It was large and spectacular with a long, streaming tail. The head and breast were pearly gray, and the rest of the bird was rusty brown. I noticed small gray patterning on some of the shorter outer tailfeathers. The bird’s flight was unlike anything I’d ever seen — strongly up then steeply down, strongly up then steeply down. What was it doing?

After just a few seconds, it descended into the trees, and then I heard loud, clear, and decidedly dove-like sound. The call, sometimes preceded by a single note, was a repeated series of disyllables, the second syllable stressed.

When I had time to consult my field guide, my fears about the psittacids were confirmed. I simply hadn’t seen enough to go on, and without knowledge of distribution, abundance, and ecology, I was empty handed.

I saw the picture of a Great Cuckoo-Dove and thought, “There it is.” But a closer inspection left me confused. One illustration of the Brown Cuckoo-Dove shows a very pale-headed male. The call I heard seems to match the written description of the Brown Cuckoo-Dove’s call more closely, and Brown Cuckoo-Doves are supposed to be more common than Great Cuckoo-Doves. But the bird I saw was so striking. Oh, what to do?

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