https://photos.app.goo.gl/LN9ZkNX5m12iY7Ny9

Note: almost all the photos here were taken on Andrew's iPhone through our guide's scope.

After Coral Eye, we headed back to the mainland of North Sulawesi to swap our masks for binoculars. We visited two birding hotspots: 

 above the town of Tomohon. While birds were our main target, Sulawesi offers a unique opportunity to see marsupials and primates in the same place and we greatly enjoyed seeing furry critters from both groups! 

Before we get to the birds, let’s start with a crowd-pleaser, the adorable 

. These minuscule primates inspired Yoda (and Grogu) in Star Wars, and you can really see the resemblance.  Before we saw them it was hard to believe just how tiny they are - the bigger adults are just 5 inches tall and weigh ~150g (roughly one hockey puck!).

We read that these are elusive night-creatures, so we didn't have much hope of seeing them, but our excellent guide knew exactly where to look. He delighted us with a family of four—three adults and one tiny baby—all tucked away and cozy inside a tree hollow during the day. This is typical behavior for the Tangkoko species, while other tarsiers are solitary, these guys sleep together in small family groups. 

Tarsier family in a tree hollow. The baby is cuddled up with its mama on the upper right, face not visible.

 (ankle). Their feet are huge—nearly 50% of their head-and-body length! Two of their ankle bones are incredibly elongated to allow long leaps when ambushing their prey (mostly grasshoppers and crickets). If we could jump like a tarsier, we’d could leap 100 feet in one go. They also have huge hands, all the better for grasping those bugs.

These other primate in Tangkoko is the critically endangered 

. There are several packs that wonder the park, delighting visitors with their antics. We enjoyed watching them groom each other as the little ones swung from branch to branch above us. We were warned to keep our distance from grown males on the trail, however, as they can get territorial and aggressive. 

 high in the canopy. Despite their name, these are arboreal marsupials, not bears.  These guys live a sloth-like existence, sleeping most of the day in trees and moving quite slowly when they do stir.

Now onto the birds. We’ve long had a soft spot for kingfishers, small usually colorful birds that have a distinct shape with a big beak and no neck. While you can find kingfishers around the world, Sulawesi is a great place to watch them with 12 native species, 6 of which are endemic. 

Aside: many kingfishers are in the subfamily Halcyoninae, with the same word origin as "halcyon days". In Greek myth, princess Alcyone (Halcyone) threw herself into the ocean after her husband, much like kingfishers dive into the water for food. The gods turned them bother into birds that would nest on the water. Alcyone's father was the god of the winds, and he would calm the seas around their nesting times to protect the eggs, hence "halcyon days". 

We managed to see 4 different species of kingfisher out of ~8 that are frequently seen in Tangkoko. The most elusive was the endemic 

. We couldn't find any in the main park so our guide took us to a special side trail a few miles away to search again. The day was getting hotter and hotter, and we were about to give up when suddenly we found one! A great end to our kingfisher run for the day that included:

calling in the brush; while they are common residents of Tangkoko they are usually very hard to see. These secretive birds usually require birders to stay still for a long time waiting for them to peak out of the deep brush, but we got lucky and practically stumbled upon them only a few meters from the trail. Of course we would have had no idea they were there if it wasn't for our guides sharp ears and eyes.

After a much needed rest during the heat of the afternoon at our room in the lovely Tangkoko Sanctuary Villa, we went back to the park to look for nocturnal birds. Our main goals were to see owls, and we did! 

Once again our guide impressed us by finding both the

 in the dark, shining a light on them briefly for us to admire them and grab a few grainy photos.

The adorably-named ochre-bellied Boobook is a Sulawesi endemic with a round head and no ear tufts. At ~11 inches tall it is bigger than the also endemic Scops-owl. The Scops-owl has a more typical owl shape with ear tufts, but it is hard to see given its smaller size (~7 inches) and camouflage plumage. 

Green-backed Kingfisher, Sulawesi Dwarf-Kingfisher, Sulawesi Lilac Kingfisher

Ochre-bellied Boobook, Sulawesi Scops-Owl, Rusty-backed Thrush, Finch-billed Myna, Sulawesi Babbler, Pale-blue Monarch, Ornate Lorikeet, Ashy Woodpecker, Sulawesi Hornbill, Yellow-billed Malkoha, Silver-tipped Imperial-Pigeon, White-faced Cuckoo-Dove, Pied Cuckooshrike, Purple-winged Roller, Isabelline Bush-hen

Azure-rumped Parrot, Gray-cheeked Green-Pigeon, Chestnut Munia, Crimson Sunbird, Sahul Sunbird, Sooty-headed Bulbul, Hair-crested Drongo, Collared Kingfisher, Lesser Coucal, Green Imperial-Pigeon, Philippine Megapode, Buff-banded Rail, Gray-rumped Treeswift, Glossy Swiftlet

The next morning we met at ~4am to drive over to Tomohon and bird at Mount Mahawu. It's only about 70 km from Tangkoko but the steep winding roads meant the drive takes about 2 hours. While the roads weren't too busy, it wasn't exactly a quiet ride. Honking is extremely common in Sulawesi, but here it's a friendly safe thing to do.  It serves as a warning whenever you go around a blind curve or past a hidden driveway, or backup, or get close to someone, or see a cow or a person or a dog close to the road, or in the road. 

Along the way we saw dozens of stands on the side of the road, even in small villages, selling stuff in plastic bottles or old glass coke bottles. Our first thought based on the color was honey but that couldn’t be right, no country has that much of a sweet tooth! Turns out of course it’s fuel.  The small sizes are very handy for rural areas without gas station infrastructure, and for the ubiquitous mopeds that don't need to buy much at a time. These are often called 

 in a play on the state oil company, Pertamina. Pertamina objects to the name and the practice, they are actually mostly illegal.

Our early  start paid off when we finally reached Mt Mahawu in time for the dawn bird activity. We saw many of our target species just by standing on the nearly-deserted road. 

Next we hiked a little ways into the forest to reach the blind for the beautiful and iconic 

. The blind was cramped but nicely-made, it had a long bench and holes at various heights in the netting for cameras. 

We waited over an hour here with nothing to show for it, but after hiking back out, our guide ran into his old mentor who said they had the bird had arrived, so we rushed back, and sure enough, there it was in all it's colorful glory! This is "THE bird" many people come to Tomohon to see, so while we were definitely excited to see it we wouldn't have been heartbroken without it, but our guide was visibly relieved when we found it.

We wrapped up with a hike to see another kingfisher, the scaly-breasted kingfisher. 

The hike was sometimes on good trails like this and sometimes just walking through jungle, trying not to get hit in the face by vines or caught by a thorn. Of course our guide glided through in shorts and a t-shirt with no scrapes or scratches.

Our tour ended with lunch at the beautiful Gardenia Country Inn. While Tomohon is famous in Indonesia for its bush meat markets that sell almost anything that moves, luckily our lunch consisted of standard fare. The property has beautiful gardens that allowed for several more bird sightings.

Gorgeous view from our lunch table in a brief moment of partially blue skies. Much of the time it poured. The center mountain is Mt Lokon, an active volcano, while the start of Mt. Mahawu is on the far right. 

Note how the crimson sunbird almost exactly matches the bright red hibiscus (closed up due to the rain).

Sulawesi Myzomela, Gray-sided Flowerpecker, Crimson-crowned Flowerpecker, Yellow-sided Flowerpecker, Black-crowned White-eye, Sulawesi Bush Warbler, Sulawesi Pitta, Sulawesi Pygmy Woodpecker

Regional Endemics (Central Indonesia, the Philippines, and New Guinea)

Citrine Canary-Flycatcher, Barred Rail, Sulawesi Brush Cuckoo, Sultan’s Cuckoo-Dove

Cinnamon Bittern, Brown-throated Sunbird, Warbling White-eye

Birding in Sulawesi, Indonesia