WUVULU ISLAND, PNG — In between SALT course sessions, I stepped out onto the beach with my binoculars. It’s not a particularly beautiful stretch of beach along here, and the outhouses built out over the water do not give a very clean feeling to the area.

Several noddies flew around, leaving me in despair again. How am I doing to identify these birds? Fairy Terns also flew among the trees, but then another white bird caught my eye. Long white tail streamer! Tropicbird! It disappeared behind trees, and I waited, breathless. There it was again — oh, gorgeous — yellow bill, black eye patch, black diagonal on upperwing, and black streaked through outer primaries. Magnificent!

After the course was through, I took a walk along the beach near Rias and Betty’s house, which is a much nicer stretch. I have seen only two different passerines since I got to Wuvulu, and both are black. One, of course, is the abundant little honeyeater. They can’t be Black Myzomelas (the only reasonably similar species pictured in “Birds of New Guinea”) unless the entire population of the island is male. I haven’t seen any that are lighter gray. And though I keep looking, I haven’t been able to see bright white wing linings when the birds fly.

The other black songbird I had not seen well until this afternoon. I’d seen them high in trees as silhouettes only, so when I heard them calling from a coconut palm, I stopped to look. There were two birds, starlings. They looked something like the Singing Starlings I’d seen in Madang, but their eyes were yellow, not red. Their black bodies had a greenish sheen, and they called loudly. Is it a different species? Or are there yellow-eyed Singing Starlings?

Farther down the beach, I spotted a small movement in the trees just it began to rain. The bird was slender, not too large, with a rusty belly and a gray hood and back. I tried to get up under the branches, simultaneously keeping drier and getting closer to the songbird. It moved actively about, and I noticed bristles at the base of its bill. This species did happen to be included in the field guide: Island Monarch.

The little bird disappeared, and the light rain subsided. I started back.

A frigatebird flew over, and it was completely black below. I did not see any sort of sac on its throat; it was just evenly, solidly black. This confirmed my conclusion that the frigatebirds here are Great Frigatebirds, even though “Birds of New Guinea” says they are less common than Lesser Frigatebirds in New Guinea waters. I thought the females I saw earlier had white confined only to their breasts, and the sighting of this male gave me a satisfying certainty.

WUVULU ISLAND, PNG — Fairy Terns. Purest, brilliant white. Fluttering, racing, swooping, floating, white.

Where you will go, you will not believe.

I grew up on National Geographic specials. There was one image that had captured my imagination and never quite let go. The Fairy Terns. Beautiful, fearless denizens of remote islands who laid single eggs on bare branches.

Fairy Terns. Living white. They danced, no longer in my mind’s eye alone, but in the bright sunshine around me.

How did I come to this place? Never, I had thought, would I see the Fairy Terns.

I didn’t say I will. I said I surrender.

And where you will go, you will not believe.

I saw other birds on the beach, that first morning on Wuvulu Island. The dark birds were noddies, I realized. Then a huge, black, lanky drifter soared overhead. Frigatebird! And a chattering sound behind me turned my eyes to a little black honeyeater with a short and droopy bill.

I wished I had a whole day to bask in the beauty around me, but soon it was time to go to the airstrip. While we waited for the prime minister’s plane, I saw another frigatebird float overhead.

After the prime minister had gone, and after all the excitement of the New Testament dedication had subsided, I sat on the porch as darkness fell. A young man named Chris came up the stairs and said he wanted to “stori” — to talk as friends. He was born on Manus Island but had married into Wuvulu. His wife may have been some relation to our hosts, Rias and Betty, but I was never clear on that point.

He asked me if I liked to snorkel, and I said yes. He promised to take me, and told me some of the things we could see.

I spotted a chicken roosting in a nearby tree. “Kakaruk istap.” I tried, in my inadequate pidgin, to explain that I had worked for our government to list and count birds. I told him that I’d like to see Wuvulu’s birds too. Then, I said, I could go home and tell my friends all about them, and they would say, “We want to go to Wuvulu too.”

He laughed at that and said that if he saw pictures in a book, he could tell me the sorts of birds that live on Wuvulu. More than happy to hear such information, I brought out “Birds of New Guinea.”

We spent the next little while leafing through the illustrations as Chris told me about the birds. The island had no hawks, he said; they all lived on the mainland. Eagles came sometimes, but apparently this is not the right time of year. I was also surprised to hear that one of the mound-builders lives here; Chris described a bird that buried its eggs in sand.

His evaluation of various birds sounded to me like attitudes that had prevailed in our country not so long ago. He looked on larger gruiforms and psittacids with disapproval because they ate crops. And one sort of kingfisher kills young chickens, he said. He asked me if there were any parrots where I came from, and I said no. There had been, but people killed them all. Why? he asked. Did they eat crops?

Well, yes. And women liked to put their feathers in their hair. Terrible reasons to eliminate a species, I thought. But I didn’t know how to say that. Please don’t make the same mistakes here, I thought.

WEWAK AIRPORT, PNG — I wish I had a couple of hours to spend at the airport here. The grassy fields appear to be wet in places, providing habitat I really haven’t had a chance to bird in the country. I saw a black-and-white cormorant fly by, and I watched a chunky little bird flying overhead in circles, singing all the while. At the edge of the runway was a tan shorebird. Its head looked more jaeger-like than anything, and I wondered whether it was a pratincole. And after I’d climbed into the copilot’s seat of the small plane, I looked out my window and saw a handful of plovers in the wet grass.

Then we took off, out over the Bismarck Sea toward Wuvulu Island. The pilot pulled out his lunch — pizza. It smelled delicious, and I’d had nothing to eat. He turned to me, offering me … a carrot. I shook my head as politely as I could.

WUVULU ISLAND, PNG –

Wuvulu appears through the haze, a graceful wisp on the surface of the water. I thought at first the sea might someday gnaw through the narrow midsection of the island. But instead, like a slender young woman, the island will enlarge as it ages, expanded by illimitable multitudes of tiny organisms beneath the water’s surface, carrying on their lives, and dying.

As we banked to begin our approach to the airstrip, I saw tiny white specks flying over the water below. Hope and excitement leapt up in me. No more lifeless seas! Here there would be birds.

WEWAK, PNG — Dollarbirds filled the sky — a dozen, maybe 20. They glided overhead on strong and capable wings. A Brahminy Kite had joined the feeding frenzy, and then a small falcon arrived.

When the day heated up, I retreated indoors and did some work on my life list. I wanted to get caught up with all sightings before I flew to Wuvulu. The huge white pigeons I saw yesterday and today appear to be called Torresian Imperial-Pigeons. “Birds of New Guinea” lumps them with a western form that lacks black-spotted undertail coverts, but as best I can tell from the checklist, they’ve been split now. My string of misfortune with raptors continues; I could not positively identify the small falcon, though I suspect it was an immature Oriental Hobby.

I also did some work on my life list database itself, redesigning some fields and the data entry form. I’m all set for Wuvulu, and I’m getting excited about what I could see there. Lacking a field guide that covers the Bismarck Archipelago, I will just have to observe carefully, take notes, and make identifications at some later date.

WEWAK, PNG — I heard deep hoots overhead, and something was flopping around in the trees. I looked up to see gigantic white pigeons in the treetops. I stood staring for a few moments and then returned to my room to grab my binocs and check “Birds of New Guinea.”

With the binoculars, I could see black spotting on the birds’ undertail coverts. Their bills were yellow, and their flight feathers were black. They fed on small berries high in the tree, and they were very acrobatic about it, even hanging upside-down to reach the little morsels. Their wings whooshed and wheezed in flight, and they called with a deep, two-syllable hoot.

Later in the day, I saw another life dove — an Orange-fronted Fruit-Dove. The bird perched high in a tree across the road and called intermittently. I had to position myself just right to see it through the branches. The bird was largely green with a reddish-orange forehead and a gray breast.

Several people flew out to Wuvulu Island this morning, but I have to wait here until Saturday. Hopefully the good birding will continue.