Sulawesi — Tangkoko forest
The whole reason to come to Tangkoko is the big three: Crested Macaques, Spectral Tarsiers, and Sulawesi Hornbills. We got all three in two mornings. The guide did all the work.
Day one, predawn, we walked to a known Spectral Tarsier roost — a hollow in a strangler fig — and watched three tarsiers emerge just as the sun cleared the canopy. They stared at us with eyes that are each the same weight as their brain. (A fact I read somewhere and have since repeated too many times.) I did not try to photograph them at that light; the guide warned against flash and I stood there with my hands full of a camera I wasn’t using. Later I got them on the way home to the hollow with ambient light and a high ISO.
Day two, a Crested Macaque troop took over our trail. Thirty animals including several infants. One adult male spent five minutes trying to steal a lens cap from my bag. I am apparently now known at that lodge.
Sulawesi Hornbills came in at midday at a fruiting tree we’d been told about. Heavy fliers, comedic in the air, unmistakable.
Everything else: Knobbed Hornbill (even bigger), a Red-knobbed Imperial Pigeon, an Isabelline Bush-hen sneaking through leaf litter that took more patience than I have, and a nightjar I never ID’d hawking at dusk.
