Indonesia – Simeulue – Completely Cleaning Up

In case you missed it, we had just spent the previous days visiting a few small islands off the coast of Sumatra. Over the course of this little excursion, we traveled 200 km (~120 mi) via a small speedboat through open-ocean with only one working motor. The speed boat was spacious enough for the four of us, our bags, and our two boatmen, but it lacked any kind of sun canopy or cushion to sit on and anyone who has ever ridden on a boat knows that the ocean likes to make waves and therefore is one bumpy ride. Thankfully the weather and waves cooperated because crossing through deep water wouldn’t have been as easy through a storm. While it wasn’t a luxury yacht, it was still a fantastic trip and 10/10 I would do it again! The final leg of our successful boat trip was to be dropped off at the island of Simeulue, a much bigger island compared to the ones we had just visited.

Indonesia is a country made up of islands, each island with similar, yet unique birds. The island of Simeulue is a beautiful place with a few scattered towns, a few patches of forest still intact, and lovely beaches and large waves, making it a popular destination for surfers. But outside of surfers staying in the surf lodges, the island is seldom visited by westerners, although birders sometimes make the trek out to the island as there’s a few endemics and a pile of subspecies that will hopefully be split some day. We only had a day and a half to bird the island but were very much looking forward to some quality time birding. At the time of this writing, according to Clements, only one bird is endemic to the island (Simeulue Scops-Owl) but there are a few other widely recognized splits (Simeulue Parrot, Serpent Eagle, and Woodpecker) and a total of another 25 endemic subspecies. So therefore a lot of potential for future species splits! I could write an entire novel on subspecies being elevated to species status, but there’s still an ongoing debate on what exactly qualifies as a species. More research needs to be done on birds in general, but the more we learn, the more we realize we need to learn. The lines may be blurred at the moment, but we suspect that soon the number of endemics will skyrocket and we wanted to be sure to see each and every one.

It was mid morning when we all piled off of our boat and hitched a ride on the back of a pickup truck to the capital city of the island, Sinabang. Michael headed directly to the airport to get a jumpstart on our next destination, Aceh, as he had already visited Simeulue. Ross, Irene and myself made our way to Sinabang to the only real hotel in the town. Like I said, tourists really don’t visit this part of the island. The hotel was very basic and despite the lack of necessities, was rather expensive. We had hoped to find something cheaper so we drove around looking for other options but were unable to find any so we headed back. Sinabang is on the eastern side of the island where we hoped to bird so we opted to stay here instead of in any of the surf lodges on the opposite coast. While the hotel was very overpriced and basic, it worked just fine for getting around as it was close to the birding locations and to save on cash, Ross, Irene and myself shared one small room. While we were going around trying to find another reasonable place to sleep, Ross had bumped into Adi, a taxi driver who happened to give him his business card just in case we needed a ride. When we went back to the hotel in Sinabang and couldn’t find anyone to drive us, we called him and he picked us up. Meeting him was fortuitous indeed and he was almost too good to be true. His prices were very reasonable and after spending some time with us, we could tell that he was genuinely interested in seeing the birds we were finding. His son came along as well (no babysitter could be found in such short notice I guess) and despite being only 4 years old was very attentive and curious regarding the birds we were searching for. One of the best behaved 4 year olds I’ve ever met! We did our best to explain to Adi that seeing the birds in the forest is best and keeping birds in a cage is not good practice.

We spent the remainder of our first afternoon in rock quarry where the critically endangered Silvery Pigeon is known to fly by. It was hot and humid as per the usual, and when we arrived the birds were likely resting in the shade. But don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t find birds in the heat of the day. So long as you are out looking, there’s always a chance. As the afternoon waned, activity picked up and we had many birds flying over. While the vast majority were Green Imperial Pigeons, along with a few Thick-billed Green Pigeons, we did have a total of four Silvery Woodpigeons, our main target, along with a number of the endemic subspecies include Changeable Hawk Eagle, Little Cuckoo Dove, Oriental Magpie Robin, Stork-billed Kingfisher, and Bar-bellied Cuckooshrike.

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After dark we headed to another nearby spot to try for Simeulue Scops-Owl, the island’s only current endemic. We were planning to walk a dirt road along fragmented forest adjacent to some fields after dark. The 4 year old son of our driver who was incredibly well behaved all afternoon became scared when his dad told him we were going to look for owls. In bahasa (language) Indonesia the word for owl is “burung hauntu” which literally translates to “bird ghost.” The small boy became very scared for us to call in any ghosts and started to cry, but we explained to him that it would be okay because it’s not a REAL ghost. He felt much better when we taught him the English word is “owl” and has nothing to do with ghosts. It didn’t take long after dark for the owl party to start, and soon Ross, Irene, myself, Adi and his son had at least a half dozen Simeulue Scops-Owls circling over our heads, calling, and perching down low for excellent, close-range photos. Adi and his son were amazed. You didn’t even need binoculars because the birds were so close. By the end of the experience the small boy didn’t want to leave! Typically these small island owls are very vocal and common in their habitat, as they were tonight, so we assumed that if there were any owls on the two smaller islands we had just visited (Bangkaru & Babi) they would have been equally easy which has us suspecting they simply aren’t on those islands.

We went to bed and not long after woke up, and proceeded to hitch a ride on the back of a large truck to our next birding location…. or well Irene and I sat inside and took selfies with the driver while Ross literally hitched on to the back. We hopped out when we reached a known birding location. It wasn’t properly described in the way Ross would prefer (i.e. GPS coordinates) but eventually we deciphered the clues in trip reports and headed down the trail. We were extremely fortunate to have excellent looks at Simeulue Parrot first thing because unfortunately this bird, being a parrot and all, is very likely to wind up trapped and sent off in a cage. That parrot was the only good thing about that morning because we hardly had any birds after that. Who knows what people do to pick up birds at this location because the forest here was highly fragmented and the trails were mud-covered and treacherous. It’s very common in Indonesia (and various other places) for makeshift bridges over stream crossings to be nothing more than a log, often times a log that’s been in place for years. Ross, leading the way, walked over one of these “bridges” and the log over the stream completely snapped in half plummeting Ross knee deep into the stream. Oops! Hey, why not trudge around with a water-filled boot, it only adds to the fun of wasting our only full morning of birding on the island! With no real decent habitat in sight, the sun high in the sky, heat blazing, the birds already quiet, and mud everywhere, we decided to look for other places to bird instead. It was only 10:30am but essentially the best part of the day was wasted. On our walk back to the main road we flushed a Simeulue Serpent Eagle off the ground and managed decent views of the prominent tail band as it flew up and away. We scoured around for another spot to try, and finally managed to find some decent patches of forest off of satellite imagery. Surely the birds would be there! So from this spot we walked about a kilometer to a turn off and then hitched a ride on the back of a truck that happened to be going in the direction we hoped to go. From the back of the truck another Simeulue Serpent Eagle flew by. Unfortunately I missed this one because I was too busy chatting with the locals. It is very easy to hitch a ride in Indonesia and usually anyone with a motorbike going a certain way will let you hop on the back, but when the big truck went to turn and let us off still 2km from the forest, none of the people sitting around would ride us 2km up the road. In fact, they laughed at us when we refused to pay 100,000IDR and walked the 2km instead, something we’d never experienced in Indonesia until this point. I like to think we confused them and they didn’t understand, but dua (the word for “two”) is dua is dua is dua no matter who says it and surely they would understand their own word.

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Anyway, we walked to the forest and it was along this walk that we came across a young boy, maybe 6 years old, with a slingshot around his neck and a Rufous-backed Dwarf Kingfisher tied to a string! The bird would try to fly and he would yank it back down as if it was a kite. This behavior of trapping and torturing animals is common in Indonesia. We ran over to see as this would have been a lifer for all of us (can’t count a captive bird as a lifer). Despite our shortcomings in speaking Indonesian, we explained to the boy that the birds belong in the forest and it’s a problem if people take them because soon there will be none left. We didn’t want to pay the boy to release the bird because that might be an incentive for him to keep catching them, instead we just talked to him and eventually he agreed to release it. I’m not sure if it was the explanation or the cookie I gave him, but we had the kingfisher in our possession and continued on our walk to the forest, releasing the bird as soon as we came across half decent habitat. I wish we had scissors on us to cut the fishing line completely off the foot of the bird, but we didn’t have anything sharp so unfortunately this bird is going to live with a plastic bracelet tied around its leg for the rest of his life. At least his freedom was restored… for now.

The forest here looked very promising, much better habitat than where we were in the morning and technically we only had one target remaining (although plenty of subspecies to still track down!) It was the absolute hottest part of the day so we were taking a break in the shade as I told Ross and Irene that I would be fine dipping the woodpecker because it wasn’t even a real split yet. Just as I had uttered the sentence, the woodpecker flew above mine and Irene’s heads and Irene shrieks “woodpecker!” You just can’t make this up. Suddenly all of the “expected” splits on the island were ticked! Now we only had a few more subspecies to find. We were tracking down these subspecies because there are some differences between the birds on this island compared with mainland Sumatra. With more research being done on birds, it is likely that more will be elevated to species status and we wanted to be sure we got all of the potential splits.

It was quite the hike back to the road where we hitched a ride back to our hotel. We didn’t call Adi to drive us because we never expected to be going to this location but we were regretting it now! When we finally got back to our hotel, Irene, Ross and I just basked in the AC for a few minutes before we grabbed a quick lunch and called Adi to come drive for us. This time Adi brought along his father who was keen to speak English with us and the five of us headed back to the same road as that afternoon, happy to have a car. It was raining a bit but rain doesn’t stop Ross so he walked around with just his bins and happened to have point blank views of a perched Rufous-backed Dwarf Kingfisher. We spent the afternoon birding around getting much better views of Simeulue Woodpecker which we found to be extremely common here! We also added to our growing subspecies like including the local race of Blyth’s Paradise Flycatcer, Black-naped Monarh, Black-naped Oriole, Scarlet-backed Flowerpecker, and Barusan Cuckoo Dove. Adi and his father became very interested in the birds we were trying to see. We did ask about Barusan Shama and they immediately knew what we were talking about and informed us that the shama is very rare and is worth over 1 million IDR. We always exercise a bit of caution when showing locals exact places to find the birds, fearing that they may want to trap them for the cage-bird industry, but Adi and his father seemed genuinely interested and wanted to know if it would be possible to start their own eco-tourism business for birdwatchers. I’m not exactly sure how many birders will read this and head to Simeulue, but if you do happen to go, please call Adi at +62 813-7953-0040 and let him know that we sent you! He now knows all of the spots we showed him and would be happy to drive you around! (Also, his car is by far the nicest car I’ve ever ridden in in all of Indonesia, and that’s a fact.)

The following morning Adi agreed to pick us up super early because we wanted to get better recordings of Simeulue Scops-Owl and Great-eared Nightjar before dawn along the same road we had birded the evening before (which also happens to be quite close to the airport). We hoped that this location would be better for recordings since this road seemed to get much less traffic. Once again the Simeulue Scops-Owls were everywhere and posed for a few photos but Ross was much more focused on obtaining a high-quality recording. After light, we just birded to see what we might find without even focusing on anything in particular. Again we had great looks at Simeulue Woodpecker and tallied a few other specie including Mangrove Whistler. This morning was a quick morning though because by 0830 it was time to head to the airport to make sure we didn’t miss our flight.

And just like that our 1.5 days on Simeulue were over. We had great views of every single target and didn’t miss a single subspecies on the whole island! It was a success for sure and as we sat at the airport waiting for our flight to Aceh we couldn’t help think of what we might find. After all, we were about to head to northern Sumatra to search for some of the most endangered species left in Indonesia! Stay tuned!