Indonesia Birds

Australians will feel at home in eastern Indonesia among the parrots, honeyeaters, white-eyes and monarchs, likewise, birders from Europe and Asia will find plenty of familiar families in western Indonesia’s pheasants, woodpeckers, pigeons, flycatchers and thrushes. But Americans will face the bewildering and exciting challenge of totally new species-something that awaits us all in Papua, which, though part of the Australasian realm, has a bird fauna all of its own.Taken from Jepson, P, 1997, Birding Indonesia, Periplus Editions. Singapore

Birding Indonesia (2)

wallace’s famous line, which runs between Borneo and Celebes, then down between Bali and Lombok, marks the boundary between the two, or rather the point of “faunal balance”. Biogeographers Lydeker and Weber also attempted to define these lines, but thankfully the modern approach is to dispense with academic arguments over lines, think of the central part of Indonesia as a transitional zone, and call it Wallacea.

Taken from Jepson, P, 1997, Birding Indonesia, Periplus Editions. Singapore