UKARUMPA, PNG — I didn’t manage to see very many birds on a brief walkabout this morning, but I did get a few marginal photographs of two of our grassland passerines.

UKARUMPA, PNG — Yesterday, I found a Long-tailed Shrike who was relatively willing to be photographed and a small flock of Hooded Munias who were not.

A brisk, incessant call (one that has puzzled me for some time) lured me into a patch of kunai grass along the road. The grass was over my head in places, but I pushed my way through, following the call.

I tried to bring the bird up with a variety of spishing calls, but it remained totally unresponsive. A grass blade quivered here; something rustled there. I saw a flash of wings once but could not focus through the layers of grass. Then a face peered out between the blades, but only for an instant.

Sometimes I tried to follow the call; sometimes I stood still, following the bird’s movements by sound, not by sight. The bird apparently moved at mid-level through the rank grass, never hitching up a stalk to examine its surroundings, never breaking cover in response to my noisy advances.

After a long wait, I saw movement and managed to get binoculars focused on a small brown head, slightly capped — and then it was gone again.

Moving back in the direction it had gone, I heard someone crashing through the grass and turned to see three Papua New Guinean lads. They seemed to know exactly what I was doing and asked if I wanted to catch the bird.

No, I said, just to see it. They replied that it might come up if we waited, and they stood silently behind me until the bird stopped calling. Then they offered to catch a variety of birds and bring them to me. I didn’t think I could explain why this was the last thing I wanted, so I simply said that I would be going away to Moresby soon, which is true.

As for the identity of the skulker, I suspect Tawny Grassbird, but the final verdict will have to await further evidence.

UKARUMPA, PNG — Tonight I went looking for white-eyes. I wore a jacket because it is chilly, and Rainbow Lorikeets were noisy in the trees.

I found the berry-laden ornamentals and sat down on the grass. Gerygones seemed to giggle as they tumbled down the drooping casuarina. Black Kites soared silently, and I could hear the white-eyes far away.

It was no use straining to see them, so I waited.

One bird started calling from a nearby tree. I couldn’t see it until it flitted away, and I glimpsed its yellow breast before it disappeared, all alone into the sky.

None of its friends or relatives came, and soon I headed home for dinner. I will try again tomorrow.

It was a month ago that I first saw the white-eyes. I’d waited there in just that spot, and suddenly the branches sprang to life as the flock arrived at once.

Months of frustration were relieved; at last I could see the tiny, noisy birds. They feasted on the old and squishy fruit, offering me intimate glimpses through scrawny branches. I left them there, eventually, still feasting, and went home to share the story with you — but the internet had died.

It stayed dead for days, and then I left on another trip.

With a dismal six posts since the first of June, I fear I’m beginning to stretch even generous definitions of the word ‘blog’. I find my desires for this blog simply cannot be fulfilled — not as long as I am living without the internet for days and weeks at a time.

Thanks to those who are sticking with me. I’ll try to keep writing what I can, as long as the internet lasts.

UKARUMPA, PNG — Last night I went to bed late, tired, and mildly disgusted. Dry season has not been dry this year; all of Friday was soggy and miserable. I’m not getting up early for birding, I thought. It’ll still be raining. And cold.

A large, winged ant had been pestering me, crawling up my leg and backpack. I brushed it away, noticed a few more on the floor, and headed for my room. I laid down to sleep without setting an alarm.

I awoke shortly after seven and got out of bed a few moments later. I glanced out the window — yep, gray and wet — and saw a Sacred Kingfisher silhouetted on a wire. There was another shape too … a bird with a hole in it?

It wasn’t right for the gap between a swallow’s wings, so my sleepy brain kept processing. Must be a white patch … a rump patch … a woodswallow! I hurried across the room for binoculars. I got back, the bird had gone, but in a moment it returned, and another came.

My first glimpse through the glasses jolted me. The bird was huge, very dark, with a long and downcurved bill. This was no small, pale White-breasted Woodswallow, surely!

Ignoring the early-morning pressure on my bladder, I yanked on some clothes, grabbed binocs and a camera, and hurried out onto the porch. The glass and screen hadn’t deceived me. The birds were really and truly black, but in another moment, they were gone.

Great Woodswallows, endemic to New Guinea mountains — yes!

I started to notice bee-eaters swooping low and close. When one landed on the nearby wires, I nearly dropped my binoculars. Then another came, and another, until several Rainbow Bee-eaters were perching on the wires, dashing out to snag insects.

I’ve never had such an excellent look at bee-eaters, and I tried to drink in every detail. I could see their dark red eyes set in black bandit masks. A brilliant turquoise streak gleamed below each mask. Their bills were long with arching culmens and sharply pointed tips.

Sky blue bellies blended into green breasts, which in turn showed flecks of turquoise and mauve. A black throat band bled to dark maroon, like an ink stain. Throats were golden and foreheads streaked with green; crowns were nearly orange. Mantles, green; rumps, electric blue; tail feathers, almost like needles.

In flight, a neat black border framed the birds’ brilliant cinnamon wings, and their jet-black tails contrasted with blue, metallic rumps.

Drops of water clung to their bills, or matted little clumps of feathers. The rain painted a streaky backdrop for living rainbows.

All at once, I understood what was happening. It was the swarm of ants! The ants I’d seen last night were part of a nuptial flight, a flight that continued until this morning. They hung in spider webs all around me, they crawled across flat surfaces, and they flew slowly through the cool morning air.

One flew past my ear, and a bee-eater left its wire, speeding straight toward me, snatching the insect right in front of my face.

The ants had brought the bee-eaters here, and doubtless the woodswallows too. I watched the bee-eaters on the wires, heads moving rapidly and continually; then, they darted out to snatch the big ants from the air, shake them and beat them if needed, and gulp the creatures down.

Woodswallows returned, five in the end, with loud, harsh calls. If one of the ants on the roof dared take to the wing, it died immediately. I saw a bee-eater and a woodswallow dive for the same insect, but the bee-eater got the prize.

The woodswallows made longer flights than bee-eaters, soaring on broad, black wings, tips sharp and upswept. A small white patch at the base of the neck, evidence of the birds’ slight bibs, was visible from a great distance as the birds flew.

Now, the rain has stopped, and all the birds have gone. Countless ants still hang in the cobwebs, but a few of them must have survived. A few of them always do.

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.