MADANG, PNG — Down at Jais Abin resort today, I got out of the water early to do a little birding. I’d seen dark, noisy birds flying around in the trees, and I wanted to know what they were. I finally found a flock feeding on berries in a fruiting tree, and though they were numerous, they were surprisingly hard to observe as they crawled among the leaves.

Most of the birds were dark above and pale with dark streaks below. They had bright red eyes set in dark masks, and their bills were stout. I wondered if they were orioles, which in the Old World are very different from our icterids. Then I saw similar birds that were glossy blue-black and also had bright red eyes. Were these the males and the others females? I wasn’t sure.

When I got back to my field guide that evening, I learned that the birds were Singing Starlings. Thinking back, I could see their resemblance in some ways to the starlings I knew, though they were notably different in structure, proportions, and behavior. Their loud calls had not struck me as particularly musical, and I wondered where the “singing” moniker had come from. The streaked birds were immatures; the glossy birds were the adults.

While at the resort, I also took some pictures of the caged birds near the parking lot.

MADANG PROVINCE, PNG — I’m beginning to settle in to life here, clearing up little mysteries and getting to know the birds better. Helmeted Friarbirds and Black and Olive-backed Sunbirds are among the most common and vocal residents. The Olive-backed Sunbirds have a rising, tentative call that is incredibly similar to one call of the American Goldfinch. The friarbirds remind me of Carolina Wrens in that the number of syllables and position of stresses in their calls are quite variable, though the tone is immediately recognizable.

I’ve noticed that I keep comparing everything to something I know from home, and I think it’s an unconscious mechanism for dealing with the stress of totally foreign surroundings. I keep telling myself I should appreciate these birds for what they are instead of for how they remind me of birds at home, but I think my brain needs some sort of foundation to process all of this brand new information.

Today, I finally solved the cuckoo-shrike puzzle. I’ve decided “Birds of New Guinea” is partly to blame for my confusion, because its illustration of White-bellied Cuckoo-Shrike shows such a small amount of black on the face that I thought I surely must be seeing something else. But today I saw one well enough to confirm that the black did not extend to the ear patch and the breast was not barred. This ruled out immature Black-faced Cuckoo-Shrike.

The most common call I’ve heard from the cuckoo-shrike is a two-syllable yelp that reminds me (here we go again) of a doubled flicker’s call. This call seems to be given most often in flight, and when the birds land, they raise and lower their wings, similar to (argh) the wing displays of Eastern Bluebirds.

The other big question answered is the identity of this small terrestrial kingfisher. Buffy underparts and unmarked wings — it’s a Sacred Kingfisher, a winter resident. That didn’t seem so difficult once it was over, but for awhile, the Forest-Collared-Sacred complex had me perplexed.

Other mysteries have popped up along the way, though. I’ve begun hearing a flock of somethings in the morning during our language classes. It seems to be about the same time each morning, just when I’m stuck inside. It sounds like they fly overhead, and the calls are screechy. Could they be some sort of parrot? I still haven’t seen any….

Also, I have begun to suspect that the call I heard my first morning here (and still hear occasionally, early in the morning) was in fact a frogmouth. I always scan dead limbs and treetops, trying to keep up hope. I can’t believe I missed the nesting birds by a day or two, and I have no idea whether I’ll see any others.

No birds-of-paradise either. I asked my language teacher, Dimad, about them, pointing to a picture on a mug. He told me that they live in the bush, which apparently means far away from here. Hmmmm.

In the evenings, I enjoy watching Black Kites and Brahminy Kites soaring in the canyon. Oh yes, that’s another mystery solved. The mottled brown raptors I saw on the sixth are indeed immature Brahminy Kites.

MADANG, PNG — As we drove toward Madang town today, I saw huge black things flying around. Crows? Raptors? No — bats! Huge, enormous bats. Flying foxes, they call them.

They were everywhere in the city, jostling for positions in the trees and sometimes streaming overhead in tremendous numbers, all the while screeching and carrying on like hellions.

In town, I also saw Rock Doves and Pacific Swallows.

MADANG PROVINCE, PNG –

Language classes and other activities started today, so I had to squeeze my birding into whatever small crevices of time I could.

This morning, I saw what I’m assuming is the black-and-white Willie-wagtail. Its song is a rich, clear warble that somehow reminds me of a House Finch’s song, though it lacks any buzzy or slurred notes.

After lunch, I had an hour free and headed toward the back of the property, which runs atop a ridge on the mountain. Yesterday, I’d discovered the spectacular view down into a canyon, so I walked to the edge to see what I could see.

Eventually, I spotted a bird perched atop a snag far below me. Its short, stout bill was red. Its head and breast were brown, and its wings were greenish. From my study of “Birds of New Guinea,” I believed it to be a Dollarbird, though as I recalled, the illustration showed the bird as entirely blue and green.

The bird made periodic loops out from its perch. Its wings were long and broad, and its flight looked rowing, somehow reminiscent of a kingfisher. It glided frequently, exposing eye-catching, silver-blue patches in the primaries.

Huge butterflies flew over the treetops, some flashing blue wings so brilliant that they seemed to produce their own light.

I saw another movement in the air and thought it too was a butterfly. But it returned to a tree, and I put my binoculars on the spot where I thought it had landed. Sure enough, a very tiny bird moved quickly through the leaves, giving me just the quickest glimpses of its red cap, breast, and rump. Its underparts were pale, and the upperparts were a darkish, flat blue. This bird also looked vaguely familiar — a flowerpecker?

Because I wasn’t on kitchen duty tonight, I had some free time before supper. I watched two raptors soaring over the canyon. They seemed to be the same species despite their differences in plumage, which I thought might be attributable to sex, age, or individual variation. They were shaped more like Buteos than anything else I could think of, with short tails and broad wings for soaring. Are there Buteos here? The wings were marked with dark tips and pale patches, and one bird had a pale head.

I kept walking toward the radio tower (or whatever it is) at the tip of the ridge, and a rich, clear call note caught my attention. The bird was olive-colored and built something like an Orchard Oriole. It had a pale cheek patch.

On a power line, I saw a kingfisher similar to the one I’d seen yesterday. It was blue on its back and crown with a pale collar and underparts, and it bobbed its short tail.

Finally, I made my way around to the balcony on the office building. I saw a few little green doves fly over — fruit-doves! Their feathers rattled in flight. I couldn’t see them well at all, but finally, two landed on an exposed branch. Their bellies were orange-yellow, and there was a blue-gray line near the bend of the folded wings. They took off again before too long, looking very chunky and quail-like in flight.

Then I heard a somewhat harsh, yelping call, and three crows came into view. They were sooty grayish in color. Their bills and bare facial skin were pink, and the bills lightened to almost white on the tips. This somehow made me think of Turkey Vultures. They stayed in dense vegetation, and I watched one hanging upside-down in a dead palm front. Such acrobatics did not strike me as very crow-like, and before long they too had moved on.

Before I went to bed, I sat down for a long session with my field guide. My head was brimming with details accumulated over the last two days, and I was afraid they’d be lost if I didn’t act quickly. Some of the identifications were easy — Helmeted Friarbird, the two sunbirds, Dollarbird, Orange-bellied Fruit-Dove and Gray Crow, for instance. But others left me flipping pages and wracking my brain in frustration.

The small passerine with the pale cheek patch was a meliphaga, which is genus of closely related and nearly identical honeyeaters. I had no hope of identifying the bird I’d seen. The two raptors I’d watched earlier in the evening were confusing as well. I thought they might be Whistling Kites, but then again they might have been immature Brahminy Kites.

Brahminy Kite, by the way, is the name of the chestnut-colored, white-headed raptor I saw yesterday morning. The little bird with bright red patches was indeed a flowerpecker. Swifts were impossible; PNG has several species of dark, unmarked swiftlets, and I had very little idea where to begin when trying to ID them. Also very confusing were the cuckoo-shrikes and kingfishers. I saw several things that my birds could have been; then again, maybe I’d discovered brand new species.

Maybe tomorrow I can sort it all out. And speaking of tomorrow, where are the parrots? I thought they’d be all over, but I haven’t seen any anywhere.

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.