I spent September in Indonesia as a tutor for the University of Vienna. During the field course „training in rapid biodiversity assessment“, in cooperation with Bogor Agricultural University, a group of Austrian and Indonesian students sampled birds and butterflies on small islands off west Java.
Thus, it wasn’t a typical birding and bird photography trip – adventurous, sucessful and exciting though – as I had to supervise the bird groups most of the time in the field.
Again, I didn’t take a super tele lens with me and there was no time for dedicated wildlife photography. So the follwing set of images from the tiny paradise of Peucang island should be regarded as „bycatch“ of a week of fieldwork in the South-East Asian jungle.
Peucang is a rather tiny islet off the westernmost tip of Java, part of the Ujung Kulon national park, famous for the last remaining Javan rhinos. Vegetation and terrestrial life was supposedly wiped out during the disastrous Tsunami following the major eruption and explosion of the nearby volcano Krakatau in 1883.
What we see, 130 years after this drastic event, is a rather young but untouched „primary“ forest and a magnificent fauna, including three species of hornbills in a remarkable density and amazingly tame crab-eating macaque (Macaca fascicularis), wild boar (species?) and deer (species?), the origin of the at least the latter two being a little doubtful – I couldn’t find any sources on this.
