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Clearing up the Collared Kingfishers

10,000 Birds

Subspecies juliae , Espiritu Santo, Vanuatu. For example only a single subspecies from Vanuatu was sampled. Image by author. It can’t have escaped your notice that there is still quite a lot of variation in these new species.

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Confusing Collared Kingfishers

10,000 Birds

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.

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Diving New Zealand – Goat Island

10,000 Birds

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.

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Violent Earth

10,000 Birds

The aforementioned Kauri in turn used these islands to reach places like Vanuatu. These far flung fragment islands have served as stepping stones in their own right to New Zealand, with the Cyanoramphus parakeets and New Zealand geckos originating there bringing a slightly tropical feel to the wildlife.

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Armchair Splits in the Pacific

10,000 Birds

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.

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Chasing cuckoos

10,000 Birds

While Australian birds migrate to New Guinea, New Zealand birds migrate to the Bismark Archipelago and the Solomon Islands (there are also resident populations in New Caledonia and Vanuatu). This makes them rather special birds here, and I can’t believe what a privileged look I got of this individual last weekend.

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The Long Reach of the Poor Knights

10,000 Birds

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.