IN PURSUIT OF PARADISE

An adventure in Papua New Guinea to seek some of the world's most incredible birds is the culmination of a 40-year dream

- MIKE DILGER

IF THERE WAS EVER proof that good things come to those that wait, it was my recent and unforgettable visit to the renowned birding destination of Papua New Guinea.

Reading Alfred Russel Wallace’s The Malay Archipelago as a teenage birder, I recall being transported to a land of astonishing birds with unparalleled beauty and wonderfully bizarre ornamentation. More inspiration came with Bruce Beehler’s Birds of New Guinea, the first definitive field guide to the island. Flicking through page after page of sumptuous illustrations, it was always the birds of paradise that flew straight off the pages and into my imagination.

I knew I would see them for myself one day but I never imagined that day would take almost four decades to come: it was October 2024 when I finally touched down on the world's second-largest island.

Papua New Guinea is synonymous with birds of paradise, hosting 33 of the world's 45 species. Some 26 also reside in Indonesia's autonomous province of West Papua, with a handful in North Queensland and the remote islands of the Malay Archipelago. But actually finding them, particularly in Papua New Guinea, is widely touted as the 'toughest birding you'll ever do'.

It's not hard to see why. Two-thirds of Papua New Guinea is still forested, with a whopping 85 per cent classified as 'untouched'. Many birding locations are remote and difficult to access, and permission to enter tribal lands is not easy to come by.

Even if you do manage to get there, you have to negotiate steep, rugged terrain and cope with the challenges of dense tropical forest. And finally, with intense hunting pressure in certain locations, these birds have become highly elusive.