UKARUMPA, PNG — I’ve just returned from PNG’s Autonomous Region of Bougainville, which is composed of the northernmost Solomon Islands. I had far less opportunity to bird than I’d hoped but still managed to see some nice Solomons endemics like the rusty-collared Pied Goshawk and striking Cardinal Lories.

On Buka Island, my room looked out over the sea, and Lesser Frigatebirds flew past every day. Lesser Frigatebirds are separated from Great Frigatebirds by their white axillaries, which are most easily visible in the black-breasted males.

One afternoon, the frigatebirds came over in flocks of dozens, spiraling high in great kettles before suddenly streaming away as if at a signal only they understood. This shot captured almost 50 birds.

Louisiade White-eyes occur on a few small islands east of New Guinea, including Nissan Island. Nissan, an atoll between Buka and New Ireland, is also home to huge, gorgeous White-bellied Sea-Eagles and to the Atoll Starling, a species that occurs on only a few small islands from the Admiralties east to the Solomons. I had a nice, if brief, look at one pair of the yellow-eyed birds.

White-bellied Cuckoo-shrikes are widespread in Australasia, from eastern Indonesia to the Solomons.

Brown-winged Starlings (Aplonis grandis) are endemic to the Solomons. The brown primaries for which the species is named can be surprisingly difficult to observe. Brown-wings are notably larger and bulkier (though proportionally smaller-headed) than other Aplonis starlings. Lanceolate neck feathers give them a slightly maned look, and their eyes are dark.

Brown-winged Starlings’ thin, high-pitched notes are completely different from the harsh calls of Metallic Starlings and the loud, commanding cries of Singing Starlings. They also look very different in flight.

KOKOPO, PNG — Crows’ eyes are blue here — blue like the sky through the coconut fronds. Their calls are high and abrupt; their tails and wings are short.

Checklists call them Torresian Crows, but I don’t buy it for a minute. Maybe one day they’ll receive recognition as a full species. This is an ornithological frontier, after all.

I haven’t had much internet access of late. I’m sorry for the long silence; maybe I can fill in the gaps someday.

UKARUMPA, PNG — Charred grass floated toward me while the Gray Shrike-Thrushes sang.

Consumed by fire, the fragments nevertheless retained their details: veins, and even tiny hairs on the blades. All black, they seemed like shadows granted liberty and substance. Weighing nothing, they traveled easily through air, but a touch reduced them to dust, to dark smears. Detail was lost; liberty, rescinded.

The fire roared and crackled on the hillside. Through binoculars, I watched orange flames gnawing outward, and a Black Kite wheeling through the thick white smoke.

Later, the flames jumped higher — lithe, bright, ephemeral, like a ring of dancing fairies. This, perhaps, is the way that myths begin: tranquility punctuated by sublimity, transformed by ravenous imagination.

A radio murmured from a bamboo house across the stream. The beat was catchy, familiar, incongruous: “Vrei să pleci dar nu mă nu mă iei / Nu mă nu mă iei nu mă nu mă nu mă iei….”

A Willie-wagtail occupied a spot on a fallen tree, the same spot where a fairywren had sat in the morning. A Mountain Myzomela babbled in the Casuarina, uttering several variations on its ordinary trill.

It is the first of June, and dry season has come to the Eastern Highlands. Days are bright; the sun is warm. Breezes are refreshing; mornings are foggy and cool.

As winter solstice approaches, I will leave this valley. And I’ll leave some mysteries unsolved.

There’s the whistled, descending song that sounds sad to human ears. A meliphaga? I do not know. There’s the small, flocking, noisy birds who surely must be white-eyes. They’ve never let me see themselves. There’s the dry call that comes from grasses — perhaps a Tawny Grassbird?

There’s the common song that’s burry like a Yellow-throated Vireo but ringing like a Carolina Wren. RIKitikiki. I’ve begun to suspect that this is another song of the Mountain Myzomela, Myzomela adolphinae.

Saturday, I followed the “tiki” song. As I approached, it stopped, replaced by a myzomela’s trill. I watched a brilliant male flitting through a tree, then down across the road to a pink-flowering hibiscus. He fed at the shrub, and I watched him stop to trill. Then he was gone, traveling farther ahead until I’d lost him completely.

And up ahead, I heard the song. RIKitikitiki. No trill, just RIKitikitiki. If it was not the myzomela, the singer was traveling with the myzomela but had passed me without my seeing. Or, there were multiple birds. Either way, I have no visual confirmation that the myzomela can sing this alternate song. It’s circumstantial evidence at best.

Then there’s the noisy, aerobatic raptors. I heard them again this morning, after I’d wondered about them for weeks. I rushed outside and could hear the call — a stuttering, almost moorhen-like sound — but could not see the birds. I finally caught a distant speck, swooping and twisting through the air. They could be Brown Falcons, but this too is a guess.

Yes, there are still mysteries here to solve. But there’s more of the world to see.