King Bird of Paradise

King Bird of Paradise

This is the photograph of King Bird of Paradise (Cicinnurus regius) that I made in Susnguakti forest of Arfak range. The bird lives in lowland and lower montane forest of New Guinea. There are several sites that visitors can go to watch this bird such as Tambrauw Mountains, Arfak mountains and Sorong ridge forest. Because the size of this bird is quite small, bird watchers need to bring binocular and, if possible, a spotting scope in order to find and watch the bird.
The wings and upper part of the bird are red whereas the underpart is white. I made the picture of this bird while I guided two Dutch tourists on a 3-day/ 2-night hiking, birding and wildlife watching in Susnguakti forest of Manokwari. I used my old camera Fujifilm Finepix HS50EXR. The telephoto lens capability of this photographic device allowed me to shoot the bird in the branch of a tree some 10 meters above the ground.
In addition to King Bird of Paradise, visitors who go to this forest can also watch Lesser Birds of Paradise, Common Paradise Kingfisher, Great Cuckoo Dove, Beautiful Fruit Dove, Hooded Butcherbird, Coconut Lorikeet, Spangled Drongo, Rufous-bellied Kookaburra and a lot more.
At nights, we did soome night walks where a local villager immitates the sound of female cuscus possum to attract a male one. We saw the nocturnal animal twice. In addition to birds and possum, we also saw a venomous white snake, ground brown skink, and a bandicoot.
The Susnguakti forest where I saw the King Bird of Paradise is located in the south of Manokwari city. It can be reached by car or motorcycle in approximately one hour ride. There is no guesthouse in the forest, tourists only stay in simple basecamp which was built by local people.