Fiji Related Topics 
10,000 Birds
NOVEMBER 23, 2011
As introductions to tropical Pacific birding go, you could do a lot worse than Fiji. It was just such a layover that landed me in Fiji a few years ago. As myself and some other stranded Kadavu-bound travellers sat watching the grey clouds over the sea with a beer or two I also managed to find a tiny Fiji Parrotfinch in the grasses.
10,000 Birds
AUGUST 27, 2014
I’ve written before about how the Collared Kingfisher is a million splits waiting to happen (not happened yet), and the golden whistlers of the Pacific have been split now (giving me on from Fiji, one in Australia and one in Vanuatu), but I hadn’t really expected the Wattled Honeyeater to be a split. Photo from ‘Eua, Tonga.
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10,000 Birds
OCTOBER 14, 2015
I remember looking at a single skin of a Long-legged warbler from Fiji, the only known specimen or record of its particular subspecies, the sum total of all knowledge about its kind. Unsurprisingly the ones that most stick in the mind were the lost species. And most haunting was the cupboard of mounted specimens of extinct species.
10,000 Birds
APRIL 11, 2012
You can encounter them from Hawaii across to French Polynesia and Fiji. Whereas the Whimbrel winters across the coasts of southern North America and is a very familiar sight there, Bristle-thighed Curlews migrate over vast distances across the Pacific Ocean to specifically winter on tropical islands.
10,000 Birds
OCTOBER 16, 2013
Diving has taken me to places like Belize, Fiji, Vanuatu, and Egypt, places that coincidentally are fun to bird. For some it allows you to boast about the amazing locations, and for some it simply scratches that itch to invest heavily in gear. Kina, or Sea Urchin. I was a diver before I was a birder.
10,000 Birds
AUGUST 7, 2013
The family also reaches into India and as far east as samoa and Fiji. The New Zealand Fantail was once placed with the Grey Fantail of Australia, but are now treated as separate, because of science.
10,000 Birds
JUNE 8, 2011
The two endemic species found in Tonga are not found in these islands, and the other species present are also found on more traditional destinations of Fiji and Samoa. I wasn’t there for birding per se, just a chance to get away from New Zealand’s winter in a sunny tropical island.
10,000 Birds
SEPTEMBER 11, 2014
Outside the truly ancient islands that are fragments of sunken continents; New Zealand, Fiji, New Caledonia and the like, the Islands of the Pacific are, geologically, ephemeral things. For the most part it seems that the species that were lost were not deep forks in the evolutionary tree. They rise, only to fall beneath the waves again.
10,000 Birds
NOVEMBER 30, 2011
I remember my first sunbird (Nectariniidae, seen near Carins) my first auks (Alcidae, near my parents home in North Wales), my first finfoot (Heliornithidae, in a lake in Uganda), stone-curlew (Burhinidae, same lake as it happens), wood swallow (Artamidae, on the wires near Nadi airport in Fiji), tinamou (Tinamidae, Tikal in Guatemala), sugarbird (Promeropidae, (..)
10,000 Birds
SEPTEMBER 14, 2011
I’ve subsequently managed to dive in some spectacular destinations, including Turneffe Atoll in Belize, the Great Astrolabe Reef in Fiji, the kelp forests of Monterey and the wreck of the President Coolidge in Vanuatu. In fact no less a figure than Jacques Cousteau rated it in his top ten, and he was no slouch when it came to diving!
10,000 Birds
SEPTEMBER 7, 2014
In 2001, Trevor Worthy described a set of bones from Fiji as a new species of very large, flightless pigeon: the Viti Levu Giant Pigeon ( Natunaornis gigoura ). Choiseul Pigeon ( Microgoura meeki ) by J.G. Viti Levu Giant Pigeon ( Natunaornis gigoura ). The bird’s skeleton bears similarities to New Guinea’s much smaller (!)
10,000 Birds
MARCH 30, 2011
It was long expected that the fossil record would show extinct members of the genus in the islands between New Zealand/New Caledonia and the Society Islands (places like Tonga, Fiji, the Cook Islands) that had gone extinct before Europeans arrived, but no such fossils have been found.
10,000 Birds
SEPTEMBER 23, 2015
Subspecies vitiensis , Fiji. The Pacific Kingfisher ( Todiramphus sacer ) is one of three species identified in the South Pacific, the other two being from the Solomon Islands and I have no images of them (The Colonist Kingfisher and Melanesian Kingfisher ). Subspecies pealei , National Park of American Samoa. Bryan Harry, USNPS.
10,000 Birds
JUNE 12, 2013
It is, instead, a member of the Petroicidae, the Australasian robins, a family mostly found in New Guinea and Australia but also reaching here in New Zealand and as far across the Pacific as Fiji. The Grey-headed Robin showing off the grey head.
10,000 Birds
SEPTEMBER 12, 2012
Enter the Silktail , an odd little bird found only on two islands, Taveuni and Vanua Levu, in Fiji. This is a long and roundabout way to introduce one such biogeographical oddity today. The affinities of this small dark blue bird with a white tail has been a longstanding mystery for taxonomists for a long time.
10,000 Birds
MARCH 23, 2011
Vanuatu has five subspecies, Fiji has three, and the far flung Solomon Islands have twelve. Tom Tarrant The extent of buff and rufous on Fijian birds has lead one author to place them with the Sacred Kingfishers instead of the Collared Kingfisher, even though there are none in Vanuatu (which is between New Caledonia and Fiji.
10,000 Birds
OCTOBER 1, 2014
Insofar as they relate to other bird families, they are perhaps closest to the thornbills, another family that is mostly Australian but reaches as far as Thailand and Fiji. Pardalotes are actually their own family, and a family entirely endemic to Australia.
10,000 Birds
AUGUST 8, 2012
Like Snowy Owls or crossbills they are also prone to irruptions, caused by Australia’s extreme climate, that have seen birds wandering as far from Australia as Indonesia, Palau, and Fiji. And, sometimes, New Zealand.
10,000 Birds
JUNE 15, 2011
A combination of extinctions and proximity to Fiji means that a trip to that island group would net you pretty much all the same birds plus a whole raft of others. According to the guides it is a forest bird in Fiji (and an elusive one, I never saw one in my week there in 2005) but in Tonga I saw it in the towns and country gardens.
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