Mount Hagen

Mount Hagen is the biggest town in the New Guinea highlands - 'city' would be stretching it a bit, as only 28,000 people live there. Rather than endure the 12-hour drive to Hagen from Tari, we flew! Sadly, we failed to convince the pilot of our plane to fly us there direct (he wasn't actually scheduled to!), so we had to return to Port Moresby, and then catch another flight back to the hills - all rather silly, but we got there in the end. This was the logistical nightmare day that never was - remarkably, everything ran smoothly.

The approach to the high altitude Kumul Lodge was notable for Archbold's (or Cloud-forest) Nightjar on the road, and the lodge itself was notable for the evening chill, the bizarre room 'styling', and the awful fried fish. The hot water was a bit unreliable too, but the place had a charm all of its own.

Kumul more than made up for any housekeeping shortcomings with the most awesome birding. The bird table in the garden was the instant attraction - Brown Sicklebill, Ribbon-tailed Astrapia, Brehm's Tiger-parrot, Mountain Firetail, Archbold's Bowerbird, Island Thrush, Rufous-naped Whistler, Belford's Honeyeater and Giant Black Rat anyone?

Elsewhere in the garden, we had stunning Crested Berrypeckers, and a star turn was an unbelievable performance by a male Crested Satinbird (formerly BoP) displaying inches from a cabin window - probably displaying to his reflection? Add in Chestnut Forest-crake, Mountain Mouse-warbler, Buff-faced Scrub-wren and White-winged Robin: what a lodge!

Just down the hill, a good forest trail turned up more - a particular highlight for Simon was Orange-crowned Fairy-wren, but we both dipped New Guinea Woodcock by an agonizing three seconds!

Excursions along the valley to both open habitats and some pretty treacherous, muddy forest trails turned up yet more superb birds - we visited a Lesser BoP lek, and also saw Marbled, Ornate, Black-throated and Hill-forest Honeyeaters, Garnet Robin, Torrent Flycatcher, the superb Torrent Lark (another new family!), Mid-mountain Berrypecker, a showy (eventually!) Forbes's Forest-crake, Mottled Whistler - the list just went on and on. Simon managed to unblock Lesser Melampitta here, too - but a calling Spotted Jewel-babbler proved to be the latest whipbird to elude us....grrr.

There was a lot of rain while we were at Kumul Lodge - but you just get on with it - it's only water after all. Try telling that to Julia, who lost her umbrella in the forest....