Papua New Guinea
Presenter: Chris Conard
Join us online on Thursday, February 16, 2023 at 7pm for a presentation by Chris Conard on Papua New Guinea. This meeting will be held via ZOOM. You must register for the meeting, but there is no cost to register and you do not have to be a member of the Sacramento Audubon Society.
Raggiana Bird-of-Paradise, the national bird of PNG,
Image by Chris Conard
In August 2022, Chris joined a group largely composed of Sacramento area birders to Papua New Guinea (PNG), which comprises the eastern half of the world's second largest island. We had a wonderful time viewing and listening to perhaps the most spectacular avifauna on earth, including the incomparable birds of paradise, bowerbirds, crowned pigeons, and paradise-kingfishers to name but a few. The tour ranged from the humid, leech-infested lowlands to cool, mossy forests over ten thousand feet in elevation, and wrapped up on the volcano-strewn island of New Britain in the Bismarck Sea. PNG is both magnificent and fraught. It is one of the most ethnically complex regions of the world, with a history of human settlement of over fifty thousand years, and twenty percent of the world's languages developed on the island. The capital, Port Moresby, is perennially listed among the ten most violent cities in the world. There is palpable tribal tension in the highlands and shocking poverty in the lowlands. Yet, the local guides were wonderfully helpful and proud to show some of the highlights of their country. If all that wasn't enough, most of the group spent five days in Australia before heading home.
Chris Conard is a Natural Resource Specialist at the Bufferlands in Sacramento County. He regularly leads field trips for Sacramento Audubon Society, serves as a county reviewer for eBird, and is a past president of the Central Valley Bird Club.
The meeting will be held via ZOOM. You must register for the meeting, but you do not need a ZOOM account to join the meeting. Registration is required due to space limitations set by Zoom. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email with information on how to join the meeting. You will also receive email reminders about this event. Please email our Meeting Coordinator if you have any questions about the monthly speaker meetings.