Solomon Islands 2025 Part 2 – Hills of Santa Isabel: Tiratonga Village & Solomons Frogmouth, Woodford's Rail, West Solomons Owl

 

Solomons Frogmouth

The enigmatic Solomons Frogmouth, endemic to Solomon Islands, is a creature I have long been interested in. It was first described in 1901 but was long regarded as a subspecies of the Marbled Frogmouth (Podargus ocellatus) of New Guinea and north-east Australia. It was not until genetic analysis of a specimen collected in 1998 that scientists realised this was a very different beast, giving the bird its own genus, Rigidipenna, in 2007. It diverged from other frogmouths 30 million years ago; the Smithsonian Institution noted the revelation had “profound biogeographical implications”.

Approaching Santa Isabel from the air

The unlikely go-to hotspot for the bird these days are rainforest gullies around the small subsistence village of Tiratonga, perched in the hills of Santa Isabel Island. It's not easy to get there. After a few days on Guadalcanal , our group flew to Fera Island, the gateway to Santa Isabel. We transferred by boat to the main island and stayed overnight in Ghasiali Resort. The next morning we were driven a few kilometres to the island's small capital, Buala.

Porter lends a hand with a suitcase

There we were met by porters who carried our luggage up the steep track to Tiratonga. Our food for the planned three-day stay was sent up earlier. It took 70 minutes to hike the 2.6 kilometre trail, reaching the village at 570m above sea level – a steep climb on a sometimes slippery slope, but not too difficult.

The climb up to Tiratonga

The village has turned a large house into an accommodation centre - rooms, comfortable beds, a wide verandah from which to enjoy the splendid view of the surrounding hills. The food was plentiful and delicious. The bathroom was downstairs and a tad on the basic side - the shower a cold water tap with flimsy cover. Still, there were birds to be seen.

Tiratonga lodgings

Lunch time at the lodgings

Tracking frogmouths is quite a community event. On our first evening we hiked to a gully near the village edge, with a dozen young men in tow. Many were adept an imitating the bird's peculiar whistling calls. We had a couple of distant replies but nothing more.

Tiratonga Village

The next morning we hiked from the village up a steep and muddy trail, having close encounters with good numbers of White-billed Crow, which was surprisingly scarce on Guadalcanal. Our main goal was to see another north Solomons endemic – the Black-faced Pitta.

White-billed Crow

We heard a bird calling for 5-7 minutes soon after arriving at the gully where most recent sightings have been made. Despite plenty of effort, then and during three subsequent visits, the pitta was not seen or even heard again. Local guides had differing views about how to find it, but no plan worked. Other sites which have yielded pittas in times past were checked without success. 

Rainforest above the village

The guides did, however, track down another key target – a West Solomons Owl at its daytime roost, close to the pitta gully. The bird was flighty and difficult to nail down, but eventually we had good views through thick foliage.

West Solomons Owl

Other north Solomon endemics around the village and surrounding forest included good numbers of Yellow-throated White-eye and heard-only Red-naped Myzomela and North Solomons Dwarf-Kingfisher.

Yellow-throated White-eye

Birds seen regularly from the guesthouse verandah perched in the open included Long-tailed Myna and Claret-breasted Fruit-Dove.

Claret-breasted Fruit-Dove

Long-tailed Myna

A pair of Woodford's Rail of the distinctive race immaculata - possibly a separate species - were tracked down in scrubby regrowth on the village edge, with satisfactory photographs managed of this cryptic species.

Woodford's Rail

The generally uncommon Ultramarine Kingfisher often showed itself around village huts.

Ultramarine Kingfisher

The villagers showed us a juvenile Northern Common Cuscus they had captured. Its mother had been made a meal of earlier. 

Northern Common Cuscus

Plentiful garden vegetables in the village are supplemented by seafood caught or traded for on the coast, and game hunted with large slingshots and bow-and-arrow; guns are prohibited. The scarcity of large birds like large pigeons and hornbills in the area reflected hunting pressure.

Villager with slingshot

Also destined for the pot was a captured Solomon Islands Skink (Corucia zebrata) we were shown. This spectacular and rarely photographed animal is the largest skink in the world.

Solomon Islands Skink

The villagers were keen to explore further opportunities to promote ecotourism in a bid to improve their local economy and living standards. Conditions there are basic. There is no medical clinic and the school operates part-time, largely with the help of volunteers. Visitors to Tiratonga are invited to bring books suitable for small children as much-wanted gifts.

Meeting with the community

The community attended a meeting with our group. We explained why some people were prepared to put effort and money into finding special birds like the Solomons Frogmouth. We told them we were very happy with how welcoming and enthusiastic they had been. Some people had concerns. Birds like Papuan Eclectus can ravage fruit crops, while Woodford's Rail digs up garden beds. Could they still be controlled if birders came more often? We explained that the birds sought by visitors are not the ones damaging gardens.

Villagers at the meeting

On our second evening we opted to try a different site for the frogmouth, this one downhill along the track we had ascended to reach the village. I had a bad fall here in the dark, smashing a good proportion of my body along with my camera flash! The villagers were quick to tend the wounds after I returned to the guesthouse, though the absence of antiseptic of any kind was a reminder to bring a medical kit, which on this occasion I had forgotten. The others heard more distant frogmouth calls at the second site but nothing more.

Wounded in the course of duty

At 1.30am the next morning, we were woken by an excited group of villagers. They had found a Solomons Frogmouth close by. Evidently they had been looking for it all night, following the failure of our earlier attempts. 

Solomons Frogmouth - above and below

We found the bird after about 10 minutes, getting good views of it on an open perch, though the loss of the camera flash meant the images here are not what I had hoped for. My injuries ended plans to look for Fearful Owl on our last night, but to see the frogmouth was enormously satisfying. Trip report here.

John Young: Child sex abuse charges and twists to the buff-breasted buttonquail saga

 

John Young and the Mustang sports car

This is the transcript of my story in the 25 August, 2025 edition of The Australian newspaper.

Controversial North Queensland naturalist John Young, hailed by supporters as “Australia's next Steve Irwin”, has been unmasked as a sexual predator following confirmation of his jailing for child sex abuse offences.

The revelation comes amid evidence indicating Young was widely assisted by fellow naturalists while hiding from police for more than a year to avoid facing charges. Young lied to friends about the reasons for his extraordinary escapade in order to win their trust. Valuable possessions hidden by friends at Young's request remain secreted, including a $70,000 Mustang sports car and one of Australia's biggest butterfly and moth collections, comprised of tens of thousands of specimens.

The Australian revealed in March that Young went into hiding when he failed to appear before the Tully Magistrates Court in August 2023 on four charges. He was tracked down in remote rainforest by police at Iron Range, near the top of Cape York Peninsula, in September 2024. The charges could not be revealed at that time because of their potential to lead to the identification of a victim of sexual assault or a child. 

Buff-breasted Buttonquail

Judge Joshua Trevino in the Cairns District Court sentenced Young to two years' jail in May when he pleaded guilty to two charges of indecent treatment of children under 16. Two further charges were dropped. The offences occurred between January and October, 2018. The relatively lenient sentence followed Young's guilty plea and evidence he produced of having a grave medical condition. A Queensland Department of Justice spokesperson said no non-publication orders are in force.

Young, 73, has been behind bars for 11 months. He has applied for parole but is understood to be pessimistic about his chances of early release.

Night Parrot

Young attracted international attention in 2013 when he took the first photographs of the critically endangered night parrot, described at the time as the world's most mysterious bird. His career as a naturalist and film-maker has taken a battering before and since the night parrot find amid evidence of multiple false claims of discoveries and photographs of rare wildlife. Fresh evidence has emerged of another baseless claim.

As the 2023 court hearing in Tully approached, Young asked friends in tropical Queensland - including a leading figure in the conservation movement and well-known birding enthusiasts - to help him hide, claiming relatives were chasing him for the repayment of money he owed them.

Young made no mention of the sex abuse charges. He was offered a bolthole on an Atherton Tabelands property in which he hid - not from relatives in search of money, but from police in search of justice. He later travelled north to Iron Range, his favourite haunt, hoping to continue to elude police indefinitely.

Iron Range

A relative identified by Young to friends as being after him for unpaid debts described the claim to The Australian as “absolute bullshit and extremely disappointing”. Young asked friends to hide possessions, claiming his relatives might seek possession of them. In fact, he feared that a compensation claim might arise as a consequence of the charges. Young is understood to have acquired the $70,000 Mustang under a four-year lease-purchase arrangement in 2020. It was paid off late last year while he was in custody.

In 2021, naturalist and author Lloyd Nielsen launched a public appeal for funds to aid his friend's research to study the critically endangered buff-breasted buttonquail - now the only bird species in Australia never to have been photographed. Nielsen said Young was financially destitute. His many friends in the natural history world poured thousands of dollars into an account set up by Nielsen.

Lloyd Nielsen

Nielsen and Young insisted the bird was flourishing in savanna woodland north of the Atherton Tableland, but intensive surveys by University of Queensland scientists have failed to find any trace of it. Experts fear the the buttonquail has become the second bird on the Australian mainland – after the paradise parrot - to become extinct.

The Australian revealed in 2022 that a photograph by Young which he claimed to be the first of a buff-breasted buttonquail nest was a manipulated image of the nest of the common painted buttonquail. Experts also dismissed his claims to have taken the first photographs of the bird itself. Young and Nielsen repeatedly promised a joint scientific publication reproducing the photographs and providing evidence of their claims about the birds. It failed to materialise.

The nest falsely claimed to be that of a Buff-breasted Buttonquail

Nielsen died in June after a long illness in Mareeba Hospital, not far from Young's cell in the Lotus Glen Correctional Centre. His funeral in Mt Molloy was attended by a Who's Who of North Queensland's naturalist community. Another close friend of Young, birding enthusiast Alwyn Simple, admits that he and others helped Young when Young was on the run, although they were unaware of the charges.

Mr Simple said he knows where Young's huge butterfly and moth collection is, along with the Mustang sports car. He does not know if funds raised for buttonquail research were used to help pay off the Mustang debt, adding: “I put my hand in my pocket to help him out with that buttonquail work. I funded it basically... I know John has lied to me but he's done a lot of good and I can't ignore that. The newspapers and all the other vultures just want to cut him down.”

John Young & Alwyn Simple

Mr Simple said his friend will no longer be a public figures when he is released. “He can't hold his head up out there after this. He's going to vanish again.” He said Young was given five years to live when he was diagnosed with asbestosis in 2023, a consequence of him working with asbestos many years ago, adding: “I'm not sure exactly how sick he is.”

While Young has been in custody, a photograph of what he told naturalists was a new species of honeyeater surfaced. The image was supposedly taken in the area of woodland where he claimed to have photographed the buff-breasted buttonquail and its nest. Several ornithologists who have seen the image say it is an altered photograph of the white-eared honeyeater, a common species. Said one birder: “It looks like he's asked AI to cross the honeyeater with a banana.”

The claimed new honeyeater species

The white-eared honeyeater photograph had in effect been digitally “coloured in”. The Australian revealed in 2006 how Young similarly altered the photograph of a double-eyed fig-parrot from North Queensland to claim it was a blue-browed fig-parrot - a species new to science. Young later admitted the claim was a ruse – part of plan by supporters to promote him as Australia's next Steve Irwin, the internationally renowned Sunshine Coast naturalist and film-maker who died earlier that year from a stingray barb.

White-eared Honeyeater

Claims by Young to have found night parrots at multiple locations since his 2013 photographs, and to have photographed the bird's nests and eggs, were rejected by a scientific investigation in 2019, when he was sacked as an ecologist with the Australian Wildlife Conservancy. Critics say his false public comments insisting that the night parrot and the buff-breasted buttonquail are not uncommon have damaged conservation efforts to protect the two critically endangered birds.

Many of his supporters, however, remain loyal. “I believe he sees what he says he sees and I will always back him,” Mr Simple said.

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The following sentence was not included in the published story: Mr Simple said he would have helped Young even if he had been aware of the charges: "All this sex abuse stuff has gone overboard. I'm not game to kiss my grandaughter anymore in case I'm arrested."

​

Plumed Frogmouth – Lost and found

Marbled Frogmouth male, Booloumba Creek

This is the transcript of my article published in current (Autumn 2025) edition of the Australian BirdLife magazine.

The evening of October 28, 1976 was pleasantly balmy. I was camped by a bubbling stream at what was then known quaintly as Beauty Spot 100 in the Conondale Range, in the Sunshine Coast hinterland of south-east Queensland. With me was Glen Ingram, who was conducting an ecological study of the Gastric-brooding Frog, the only vertebrate animal in the world - other than some fish - that raised its young inside its stomach. This unique frog was found only in the Conondale Range and neighbouring Blackall Range. We were not to know that within three years, it would be extinct.

Nor did we know as we set up camp that Beauty Spot 100 - a key site for the frog and indeed a place of great beauty – held other secrets. At 9.50pm that October night, Glen was downstream from camp looking for frogs when I heard a peculiar call from inside rainforest across the creek. I describe it in my notes as a series of gobbling “caw” notes uttered quickly in succession, of moderately deep tone and descending in volume. I had heard nothing like it previously.

Beauty Spot 100

I thought this might be the scarcely known Plumed Frogmouth - the southern subspecies of the Marbled Frogmouth - although nobody knew what it sounded like then, and there were very few records, historically or in recent times. A month earlier, in the Nightcap Range in north-east NSW, I flushed a bird from a piccabeen palm which was possibly a Plumed Frogmouth.

My notes record that I crossed the creek and quickly located the Beauty Spot 100 bird. It was perched three metres from the ground on a vine hanging from a strangler fig. I watched it call; this was without doubt a Plumed Frogmouth. I noted rows of white spotting on the wings, the rufous-grey colouration, long bristle plumes on the forehead, and orange eyes.

Marbled Frogmouth pair at day roost, Blackall Range

I summonsed Glen with a loud “cooee” but we could not immediately relocate the bird, although it called frequently over the next two nights. Then, at 12.45am on October 30, a frogmouth called very close to camp. We found it perched five metres away on a creekside stump. Other features noted included blotching on the underparts “giving an irregular, patchy” appearance. A different call, a double-note “koor-loo”, was heard.

The notes describe these encounters as “a most exciting time”. Indeed. This was the first time the Plumed Frogmouth had been heard; the first sighting of adult birds in the wild; and the first field observations of its behaviour. John Gould had two specimens of uncertain provenance when he described a new species, Podargus plumiferus, in 1845. (While subsequently regarded as a subspecies, taxonomists consider it a likely candidate for future resplitting.)

Otherwise, as my colleague Chris Corben reported subsequently, there were no corroborated records – or sites confirmed for reported birds - prior to 1969, when the naturalist David Fleay was given a nestling retrieved from a creek on Mt Tamborine, south-east Queensland. In 1972, the remains of a Plumed Frogmouth were found north of Lismore, NSW.

Conondale Range National Park

After the Beauty Spot 100 birds were discovered, it was a long time before anybody else spotted a Plumed Frogmouth, although I saw one at what is now the Booloumba Creek camping ground in the Conondale Range in September 1977. (Like Beauty Spot 100, that site continues to be occupied by frogmouths to this day.) In the 1970s, call playback was essentially unheard of as a birding tool in the field.

The Plumed Frogmouth is shy and secretive - unlike its much more common cousin, the Tawny Frogmouth, which shares its habitat. The bird rarely ventures into the open and is reluctant to leave the dense rainforest thickets it frequents, often perching high in the canopy and frustratingly out of view.

By the early-1980s, playback had become a game changer, as it was discovered that birds were responsive to taped calls. Chris expanded knowledge of the bird while employed by the Queensland Forest Service to survey wildlife in the Conondale Range. He found frogmouths at many new sites and provided tapes for a survey undertaken by the Queensland Ornithological Society. In November 1983, teams of volunteers scattered along the east Australian seaboard from Cooktown in the north to Sydney in the south gathered at dusk in suitable-looking habitat to play tapes. At the time, it was arguably Australia’s biggest single Citizens Science undertaking for natural history research.

Female Marbled Frogmouth, Imbil State Forest

Birds were found to occur across a wide area extending from the Many Peak Range near Miriam Vale in Queensland in the north, south to Lismore in NSW. By 1992, they had been recorded from 250 sites at 18 widely separated localities up to 104km inland and up to 800 metres above sea level. The frogmouth was not detected in north Queensland’s wet tropics – the nominate subspecies of Marbled Frogmouth occurs in Australia only in northern Cape York – nor in other well-known rainforest sites such as Eungella in central coastal Queensland and the Bunya Mountains.

Birds occurred in notophyll vine scrub, or subtropical lowland rainforest. This habitat was once widespread in south-east Queensland and north-east NSW but has been largely cleared. The most substantial of remnant areas surviving are in the Conondale Range, which accommodates well over 100 Plumed Frogmouth sites today. I live in the foothills of the nearby Blackall Range, where eight pairs reside within 10km of my home.

A big mystery is why the Plumed Frogmouth went unnoticed for so long when its extraordinary and evocative call is so distinctive. One factor is the expansion of community interest in natural history combined with the advent of playback and other field aids. Still, I and others had camped frequently at Beauty Spot 100 and other sites prior to October 1976 and heard nothing of interest. It is possible the bird had undergone a population crash due to disease or some other factor, and was at the start of a comeback when that “exciting time” fortuitously came to be.

Marbled Frogmouth immature female, Conondale National Park

Interestingly, the frogmouth in recent years has been found at high elevations in the McPherson Range on the NSW-Queensland border in temperate rainforest. This includes the vicinity of O’Reillys Guesthouse, an area visited by numerous birders over many years. It might be expected they should have been found there long ago; it could be that climate change or other factors account for relatively recent distributional change.

At the time of the 1976 discovery, with friends including Glen Ingram and Chris Corben, I was heavily involved in a campaign by the Wildlife Research Group (Queensland), Save the Conondale Range Committee and others to stop logging and the bulldozing of forest for plantations in the Conondales. The Plumed Frogmouth featured prominently in the campaign, the chief objective of which was to protect the area in a proposed 31,000ha national park.

Tawny Frogmouth cohabits with Marbled Frogmouth

A silver lining to this story is that we prevailed. Logging and rainforest clearing were stopped. The Sunshine Coast hinterland today is graced by the 36,000ha Conondale National Park. Campsites where once we encountered no others – even during busy holiday times – now attract thousands of visitors.

Outside the park, the Plumed Frogmouth survives in small vine scrub remnants that intersperse extensive hoop pine plantations in the Sunshine Coast hinterland; sometimes birds reside deep inside monocultural plantations. I have campaigned in recent years for parts of Imbil State Forest and other plantations to be considered for “rewilding”, allowing the recovery of greater areas of vine scrub.

Hoop pine plantation & continguous subtropical rainforest - Imbil State forest

Hoop pine is a native rainforest tree. If plantations are left unlogged, they are eventually colonised by other rainforest flora. Wildlife such as the endangered Black-breasted Buttonquail, also restricted to subtropical vine scrub, is quick to utilise restored plantation. Lowland rainforest is also the habitat of the Coxen’s Fig-Parrot, which many fear may be extinct, and many other range-restricted plants and animals. BirdLife Australia is among organisations that back the rewilding push.

Black-breasted Buttonquail

The timber company holding Queensland state forest logging permits, HQPlantations, has rejected submissions to conduct a small rewilding trial in a plantation adjoining Conondale National Park. Subtropical lowland rainforest is a critically endangered habitat. A key battle is over but the war is not yet won.

Rainforest at Beauty Spot 100

Ghana April 2023 PART 4: In search of a pangolin

 

White-bellied Pangolin

Following our successful encounter with the White-necked Picathartes (following post) our minds turned to another creature well-known from rainforests in the vicinity of Bonkro in central Ghana: the White-bellied Pangolin. Pangolin sits high on the wishlists of many critter lovers. The only mammal to be wholly covered in scales, the survival of several species is in the balance as pangolins are slaughtered in their tens of thousands. Pangolin scales are considered to have considerable value as traditional medicines in east Asia, especially China and Vietnam, but there is no evidence supporting this. Shy and harmless, the pangolin is believed to be the world’s most heavily trafficked mammal. As pangolin populations in Asia disappear, the trade increasingly has shifted to Africa, where the four pangolin species are now absent or rare throughout their ranges.

Before our tour, the group agreed with my suggestion for a $US50 reward for anyone in the villages around Bonkro who found us a pangolin, the stipulation being that we had to be taken to the pangolin and not the other way around. A man with tracking experience came forward and one of our Ashanti guides, Ibrahim Entsie, also had past form in finding pangolins. With these two guys, our group set out at sunset on Day 11 of our trip to find a pangolin. This was not going to be easy. We followed the trackers up and down ridges, along creeks, through regrowth and primary rainforest - often in rough terrain with no paths.

Following the trackers

We spotlighted a sleeping African Pygmy Kingfisher and located a delightful Beecroft’s Anomalure, a kind of flying squirrel.

African Pygmy Kingfisher

Beecroft's Anomalure

Three hours later, the trackers froze when they detected a rustling in the undergrowth: a pangolin feeding on the ground. As soon as the animal realised we were on to it, it rapidly climbed a densely foliaged tree. The pangolin was hard to keep track of as it crashed through the branches but we all managed good looks, although the foliage and its constant movements made photography challenging, as these images demonstrate. The first image in this post is of an animal jumping between branches. In the second image below, it is clinging to the side of the tree, its head visible.

Jeff Skevington had more success with his images below.

We were one very contented group following this encounter.

Later, Ibrahim Entsie explained his personal history with pangolins. His family lived in an impoverished village near the city of Cape Coast, eking out a living from farming palm nuts. He hunted pangolins and other game for bushmeat to sell for several years to raise money to help him finish his school education. The meat was much sought after and the scales were disposed of. Today, a dead pangolin fetches about $US20 on the black market, he says: “It is the Chinese traders who are buying them now for the scales and they might become extinct if it keeps going on.”

Ibrahim Entsie

The pangolin was not the last of the goodies at Bonkro. We had two nights at Ashanti’s new lodge. In and around the picathartes forest we found two wanted specialties: Tessmann’s Flycatcher and Yellow-throated Cuckoo.

Tessmann's Flycatcher

Other birds included a White-crested Hornbill (below) showing nicely in the early morning light.

In the afternoon we visited a logging road in the nearby Kwebene Sam Forest. Here we saw Red-headed Malimbe, Western Bronze-naped Pigeon, Tiny Sunbird, Cassin’s Honeybird and Red-shouldered Cuckoo-shrike. We were back at the logging road the next morning, seeing the distinctive western race of Yellow-billed Barbet, more Red-billed Helmetshrikes, Western Nicator, Violet-backed Hyliota and large numbers of Red-fronted Parrots.

Red-headed Malimbe

After checking into Royal Basin Hotel in Kusami, Ghana’s second biggest city, we visited the nearby Bobiri Butterfly Sanctuary in the late afternoon. The highlight here was a Black Dwarf Hornbill feeding its young at the nest.

Black Dwarf Hornbill

The next morning – Day 13 of our tour - saw us depart Kumasi to head north on the highway that extends from the coast in southern Ghana north to the Burkino Faso border. Two hours north of Kumasi we stopped at a forest remnant called Opra, a key site for the scarce Fiery-breasted Bush-shrike. Some of the group managed brief views of the elusive bird. Other birds included Brown-crowned Tchagra, Red-cheeked Wattle-eye, Grey Tit-Flycatcher and Bearded Barbet.

Brown-crowned Tchagra

We arrived at our next destination, Mole National Park, in the late afternoon after stopping to rescue a Graceful Chameleon (below) by removing it from the busy highway.