Abstract
[Editor's Note: Some of you may not have traveled much in the remote areas of the world where many of our favorite bird! come from. The people of the forests, hills and jungles in much of the tropical work do not share the "warm and fuzzy" attitude many of us hold toward birds. We love ou: birds. They eat their birds - or trap and sel them to buy food. This article has some sad aspects combined with the writer's rea love for his birds. Here you'll get a glimps of how it is "out there." SLD, ed.]
Scouting
A s in a flash, the bird darted northward some 50 feet above the three nest poachers, squeaking in monotonous tones as it went. The chatter came from a cluster of giant trees whose dark shadows still veiled the thick and wild undergrowth below. For a moment, the three young men couldn't contain their excitement.
The past four days the men - Takale Konia, Bako Yakham and Kensi Bai - observed the same parrot, or so they thought, taking the same path in flight as it left that ancient-looking tree on its way to the open fields as far as their eyes can see, and back. By the look of the tree, they thought that it would take six men with their arms stretched out and joined together to go around its base.
They finally concluded with certainty, as they had been doing the last three years, that something big was going on inside that overwhelming canopy of foliage. They could only guess the exact spot where the nest was located.
Konia, the 28-year-old leader of the group, looked eastward and marked the time when the bird passed overhead: more or less 5:30 A.M., as hinted by the streak of upward, faint yellow rays breaking through the clouds that hovered atop a nearby mountain.
Shortly after that, they decided to have a closer look the next morning, about the same time. As they begun the trek back to the low lying fields on their way to their mountain side village, the whole place gradually awoke to the gleeful explosion of birdcalls and cacophony of the cicada morning song.
Check the Nest
The next morning, with the bird gone for five minutes, Konia started to work his way up the giant tree. He had guessed that it shot 200 feet towards the sky, just like the rest of the towering trees nearby, as if conspiring to shut out the sun from reaching the flurry of undergrowth below.
Slung around his shoulder was a bilum (a hand-woven multicoloured thread bag) containing several six-inch nails, a hammer, a loop of rope, and a flash light. He could also use the bilum to carry the birds down, if such birds existed in that canopy. As he pulled himself up, he hammered six-inch nails deep into the slippery trunk, distancing them a meter above each other.
The spikes served as his foot and handholds to reach the first branch the size of his body ten feet above. From there, he would launch himself again for the next branch, which is a little higher this time. This was no easy job but he had done this many times before in the quest for nests. The coming and going of that singular bird in clearly showed that a nest was somewhere above him. If they were lucky, this tree should have a colony on it.
The hunter found a hole that led to a cavity inside the trunk. A nest lies a mere foot away from the entrance. The rustling he caused while he parted away the crisp round leaves of the crawling vines camouflaging the nest entrance triggered a chorus of tiny squeaks from some creatures inside.
He fished out the flashlight and trained the beam of light towards the nest. There, he saw two black birds, crouching as lumps, screaming and squirming, their heads bobbing up and down. Expectant huge mouths opened wide and stretched out towards the source of the beam. The man guessed that they were just a few days old, and was not surprised that the hen was not with them.
The shells from which they were freed still appeared fresh as well as the carcasses of unconsumed worms that the mother, or the father parrot could have brought home a day before. He did not touch the chicks, but instead, reported to the two younger men patiently waiting below what he had discovered.
They decided to come back after four weeks. By that time, the birds would grow full feathers. At just five weeks old, the two could endure the stress of a whole-day travel from Kerema, an outback coastal township close to the rainforests of Gulf province in the southern side of Papua New Guinea. This is where the nest was found, and from there, they would have to transport the babies to the small city of Port Moresby. Buyers for the two birds and others that they may poach later from the same tree could be found there. And so it is that one day in Port Moresby, they found me.