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.

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