My hotel in Jakarta had been clean and with a good restaurant but they played the same two songs on repeat 24 hours per day. After three days I was ready for a change so I headed east to Surabaya. There’s only so much Lily Allen a person can bear… It could have been worse: only Coldplay and no lifers. Yes, for I scored a lifer – smack in the middle of grey, noisy, smelly and occasionally flooding Jakarta. The Sooty-headed Bulbul enlivened my factory tour and effectively doubled my list for Indonesia.

I had picked my East Java hotel based on my usual checklist. The chosen hotel did have a New Age vibe, with a website featuring attractive young ladies in yoga poses but the presence of several eBird hotspots was what I was looking for. Not spirituality, no matter how prettily packaged. Despite all my careful preparation it turned out the hotel did not have the reserved room for me – a mistake had been made. I had two options, one involving a stable and a manger; the other changing hotel. My client came to the rescue and booked me in a hotel with a garden. And with two mightily intimidating volcanoes in the background: Gunung Arjuna and Gunung Penanggungan. Dutch people don’t do mountains, let alone 3000-meter tall ones that spew fire. So, I did what I usually do when faced with imminent death: I slept like a log.

The next morning, I left my room at sunrise and checked out the garden. There were two Javan Munia near the pool, and I found a tree with 6 species. With a single tree holding that many species and East Java having at least 100 trees (probably more), I’d say you have a fairly good chance of seeing an impressive number of birds. That tree had a family of Small Minivets (microvets?), Common Iora (very green here), Freckle-breasted Woodpeckers, Pied Triller, Ornate Sunbird and Dark-backed Imperial-Pigeon. Eastern Red-rumped Swallow, Spotted Dove, and Collared Kingfisher in another tree and Edible-nest Swiftlet in the air.

Indonesia is a fantastic country to visit. The birdlife is rich (13% of species call the islands home) despite the hundreds of millions (very nice and friendly) people, the deforestation and excessive trapping. The food is in a league of its own – surely one of the world’s great cuisines. Accommodation offers anything from budget to luxury.

Conservation efforts are being undertaken across the many islands, and I personally visited one such project. A community-based project is using (endangered) bamboo species to create erosion breaks, improve soil, facilitate groundwater infiltration and provide additional income.  I studied each planted thicket carefully to the delight of my hosts and learned more about bamboo than I thought was possible. The more cynical among you will say I was merely scanning for Bamboo Bush Warbler. Afterwards, we visited the bamboo education centre and the Pasar Keramat or sacred market, where I got mobbed by a hundred schoolchildren who probably thought I was Matt Damon (I get that a lot). Hundreds of selfies later I was released to a refreshing drink and fresh fruit. It was fantastic to see how a community can recuperate degraded land (the market used to be a waste dump), conserve cultural heritage (pictured below is the Majapahit elephant fountain the community dug up and rescued) and provide better incomes to all. I didn’t even mind I couldn’t identify the Bulbuls in the market canopy. One more photo opportunity with the ladies who’d prepared lunch (“Grandma, tell us about the day the giant Matt Damon came to the village“) and we were back to the hotel for a flight to Bali the next morning.

Since Kai Pflug had graced the Surabaya region with his presence in the past I was happy to use his bird photographs to illustrate this post. As always, a debt of gratitude.