UKARUMPA, PNG –

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UKARUMPA, PNG — I spent some more time with “Birds of the Aiyura Valley” tonight, flipping back and forth between it and “Birds of New Guinea.” There are entire orders I haven’t seen up here, including the doves and the cuckoos. (On second thought, a small flock of Rock Pigeons hangs around the market tables and basketball court, but they hardly count.)

Brian keeps talking about the forest on the ridge, almost promising me that he’ll arrange a trip up there some day. He saw four species of bird-of-paradise in that forest several years ago, but he hasn’t been back up since. He’s more interested in orchids than he is in birds, but maybe I can be a good influence on the man.

The two of us were together yesterday for a day trip into Madang Province.

I saw golden-plovers in the grass as the 206 touched down at the Madang airport. From the brief look I had as we whooshed past, they seemed to be acquiring breeding colors. It is about time for that I suppose; “Birds of New Guinea” says they’ll all be far to the north in another month.

A Helmeted Friarbird popped up in a tree and called. Black Kites were about the only other living species I saw through the rest of the day, though Brian and I did have a nice look at a Dollarbird flying overhead and calling. My hoped-for hornbill did not materialize.

I specify “living species” because we also saw some dead ones. Brian pointed out a dessicated King Bird-of-paradise that hung by its feet from the rearview mirror of the truck in which we rode. Its plumage had faded to the color of a red velvet cake, and its two wiry tail feathers were gone.

And then, on our return to the airport, I had a brief glimpse of a Varied Honeyeater before we left the lowlands. As we flew over Astrolabe Bay, two large waterbirds flew below the plane, but they were much too far away to see.

UKARUMPA, PNG –

UKARUMPA, PNG — Ready to stretch my eyes after a day staring at the monitor, I flopped into a chair on the porch. I elected not to grab the binocs.

You can probably guess what happened next.

I’d sat there quietly a few minutes; then, I jumped out of my chair. A raptor had appeared, and it hung in the sky, hovering high above the ground.

The fastest I could fetch my binoculars wasn’t fast enough. I returned to the porch, and the bird was gone. I was disgusted, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that the bird had dropped from the sky and still lurked somewhere in the trees below.

What would hover? I wondered. A Black-shouldered Kite, or whatever they’re called?

Long moments passed.

I almost felt, rather than saw, a pale raptor moving through the trees. By the time I brought up the glasses, it was in the open. Black shoulders. White tail.

Kite!

The bird tried to land in the flimsy branches of a pine, but it gave that up and flew to the top of a snag. As it flared to land, I had another clear (if distant) view of its large black wing patches and its white tail, which showed a tapering gray streak down the center of the upperside.

It sat there facing me, far across the stream. I could barely see its pale breast with my unaided eyes.

I saw a flash as it took off again, and I scarcely breathed as it veered toward me, approaching swiftly with deep, steady strokes of its wings. It circled once or twice, gliding briefly on V-shaped wings. Its back looked brownish gray to me, and I thought at the time that it must be young.

Then it landed in the tall, droopy conifer in the garden — the one where I see gerygones and myzomelas. But the thick foliage obscured it almost completely, and I was disappointed that I didn’t have a chance to study it so close.

Even when Carter drove into the yard on his motorbike, the bird stayed put.

But finally, it dropped, not tucking its wings and plunging but instead fluttering down on strongly uptilted wings. Its tail pointed down, and its yellow talons stretched downward too as it descended dozens of feet and — I lost it.

I thought it must have reached the ground and disappeared in the grasses. Surely it would reappear soon. As the moments stretched on, I theorized that it had been successful, that it was still on the ground enjoying fresh meat.

Movement caught my eye. Another raptor flew over the same spot, this bird all brown. I fumbled with the binoculars, and I watched the bird fly far away. I never saw its head, but I saw no bars or patches of color anywhere, and it flew with steady wing beats, very unlike the goshawks I’ve glimpsed before but never identified. I watched it until it disappeared in the shadows of the pines on the hillside.

Puzzled, I turned my gaze back to the grass where my kite had disappeared. The evening grew darker, and I wondered if the kite had flushed and vanished while I followed the other bird. June called us all for supper. So I left, not knowing what had become of the kite.

Quickly running through possibilities on the brown bird, I guessed that it could have been a Brown Falcon. Nothing else seems to fit, but then, I sure didn’t see much either.

As I started reading about Elanus kites, I quickly realized how little I knew. I remembered that the New World form had been split from the Old World form, but I had never paid enough attention to see that Australia has two species, neither of which occurs in PNG, and one of which is nocturnal. There are four Elanus species in the world — for now, at least — and the one in PNG (E. caeruleus) is the same species that occurs all the way back through Asia and into Africa.

When I saw pictures in the Aussie field guide, I was distressed to realize that I hadn’t seen black patches on my bird’s underwings. I’d had at least one good look at the underwings; why had I missed that?

Well, because caeruleus doesn’t have the black underwing patch. That’s one difference between it and the other three. Google rewarded my persistence with a very interesting paper on the taxonomy of Elanus kites, and I learned a lot about the differences among the taxa.

The paper describes hunting behaviors of caeruleus and leucurus, the New World form. Caeruleus hunts from perches, just as I’d watched my bird do, but leucurus almost never does. I never had a look that would have let me see the bird’s wing-to-tail ratio when perched, but that’s another predictable difference.

Some scientists suggest that the elanid kites (Elanus and closely related genera) are far more different from hawks (and “kites” in genera like Milvus and Haliastur) than is currently believed. They may in fact constitute their own order, showing affinities to falcons and owls.

And what of my assumption that the bird was young? I don’t have enough information to say for sure, but I’m relatively certain that it did not show pale fringes on its feathers, and I saw no rusty coloration. I didn’t find a good description of the differences between young kites and adults.

Sometimes I find the questions and information overwhelming, but I’m too enthralled to just give up. And when it does become too much, I can retreat to experience. I can see the kite dropping, dropping through the air, bright yellow talons reaching down.