After my first post on Timor-Leste I am realising I have already lost all hardcore birders who do not like Monty Python. Still, there’s one more fetish I have to confess to: I love to chase for eponymous birds – particularly those named after exotic or little known places. I have already been to São Tomé, one day really hope to go to Inaccessible Island, but today it’s Timor. Timor has 24 endemic bird species, only 6 less than São Tomé e Príncipe, and just two short of the Galapagos’ tally.
Some of you will check against the Avilist when reading this post and find different names, or sub-species instead of full species. I don’t care – these are Timorese birds, I want them to be Timorese and Timor names are better. You need an example? My guide Daniel and I had lunch in Baucau, the country’s second town. A place with a distinct Portuguese colonial feel to it. The venue of choice: Restaurante Amália – named after fado singer Amália Rodrigues (it came as a bit of a shock to everyone when I told them she had passed away. In 1999). The food was basic but good and little swifts swooshed around us, weaving amongst the trees and in and out of the canopy.
Officially, they were Drab Swiftlets, but unless the ornithologist who came up with that name is wearing lime-green pants and a mauve jacket over a sky-blue shirt with pink polka dots he has no right to speak. Drab? Edible Nest Swiftlet is drab, sir. This is a rather pretty pied bird. You should be stripped of your PhD, sir! Who dared to misname this poor creature? Oops, the rather famous ornithologist GR Gray as it turns out… Well, any Victorian called “grey” having the nerve to deem a fellow living being “drab”? I stand by my case. No, sir, no. This is the Timor Pied Swiftlet from today onwards. Avilist 2025 people – take note.
For my fellow-fetishists, attention, here comes the list of all Timor-named birds I saw during my trip: Timor Bush-chat, Timor Nightjar, Timor Friarbird, Timor Meliphaga, Timor Gerygone, Timor Pied Swiftlet, Timor Cuckoo-shrike, Timor Cicadabird, Timor Heleia, Timor Fantail, Timor Cuckoo-dove and the birds with scientific names Cincloramphus timoriensis and Edolisoma timoriense.
I can strongly recommend those with an adventurous spirit to go to Timor-Leste and assemble your very own Timor-themed bird list. Take some pictures too – all the bird photographs for this post come from our 10000birds archives. They feature related species and not the actual Timor species. Please go and fix this.
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