New Caledonia

Rivière Bleue

Information

SITE RANK

23

HABITAT Lowland rainforest

KEY SPECIES Kagu, Crow Honeyeater, Horned Parakeet, Cloven-feathered Dove, New Caledonian Friarbird, New Caledonian Cuckooshrike, New Caledonian Crow

TIME OF YEAR Access is easiest outside the rainy season (December to April), but the best birds are present all year round

The Kagu moves along with a stop-start walk, rather like a plover.

New Caledonia is a long, thin island in the South Pacific 1,200 km off the eastern coast of Australia. In contrast to most of the other islands in the region it is not volcanic in origin, but actually a small splinter from the original ancient southern continent of Gondwanaland. Evidently it left Australia 85 million years ago and has been in isolation ever since, as evidenced by its unique fauna and flora – it would certainly need all that time to produce a bird like the Kagu.

The Kagu is one of the world’s most peculiar and singular birds. It looks odd, sounds odd and acts odd. It is the sort of bird that, when you see it running towards you across the forest floor, you half expect it to stop and speak to you and confirm that you are merely dreaming. About the size of a large domestic chicken, it is generally reckoned to look like a cross between a rail and a heron, which is about right. It has a long coral-red bill that is designed to dig into the soil (it has plates to cover the nostrils), and long red legs that allow it to move quickly over all sorts of terrain, which it does in an upright stance. Its wings are rounded and fully developed, but the muscles powering them cannot lift it into the air; all it can do is glide while running downhill, so it is effectively flightless. Its plumage is astonishing, all-over silver-grey, and about as camouflaged as a crow on an iceberg. It has a bizarre, wispy crest that normally rests on its back, but can be raised, hoopoe-style, when the bird is excited, which it frequently is. Large, red eyes are sited close to the bill to afford excellent binocular vision while the Kagu collects its favourite beetles, millipedes and lizards from the shady forest floor. When foraging it spends much time standing still, plover-like, before running towards prey. When alarmed or excited it occasionally hisses and, each dawn, pairs perform a territorial call that may be heard from 2 km away and is best described by suggesting that, if cockerels barked rather than crowed, they would sound like a Kagu.

The utterly surreal impression given by this unique bird, which is in its own family with no close relatives, is magnified when you find it at its world headquarters, the Rivière Bleue Provincial Park, not far south of New Caledonia’s capital, Noumea. Rather than being an inaccessible wilderness, Rivière Bleue is a pleasant weekend retreat for many locals, with opening times, access roads, toilets and attendant tourists, with some well-worn forest tracks and a lake formed by damming. While you are eating your packed lunch at one of the picnic tables, the Kagus not infrequently breeze past you, strutting around like peacocks at a country estate. It all adds to the weirdness.

However, the perilous state of the Kagu population should shake you out of any dream, for this is a seriously rare bird. It is confined to the 400-km-long main island of New Caledonia (Grande Terre), and it is only within the 90 sq km of Rivière Bleue that it is secure or increasing, and that in itself is partly helped by a captive breeding programme. Elsewhere in New Caledonia, Kagus are threatened by their ever-dwindling habitats (partly to make way for the island’s many nickel mines), predation of their eggs and chicks by introduced predators such as rats, and by direct killing by feral dogs, which are common in the countryside. There are fewer than 1,000 of these glorious birds remaining, and possibly no more than 500.

While you are searching for the Kagu (most birders seek out ‘Mr Kagu’ himself, Yves Lettocart, to do this – he is the warden and chief preserver of the species), Rivière Bleu has a selection of other species to enjoy in these tall, undergrowth-dense lowland forests dominated by the mighty Kauri trees (Agathis). Indeed, all but one of the island’s endemics (the New Caledonian Thicketbird) occurs here. Rivière Bleue is a top site for the very rare Crow Honeyeater, for example, an outsize member of its family with mainly black plumage, orange-yellow face wattles and a pleasing song, as well as the New Caledonian Friarbird and the smart New Caledonian Cuckooshrike, almost all sooty dark-grey with pink undertail coverts. Up in the trees you might glimpse the rare Horned Parakeet, with its two wiry head plumes, or the dark-plumaged Goliath Imperial Pigeon, the largest and plumpest of the world’s arboreal pigeons. With considerable searching, you might be fortunate enough to come across the rare Cloven-feathered Dove, a portly green pigeon that appears to wear woolly white leggings.

It would be tempting to say that the Kagu is the most famous of the inhabitants of Rivière Bleue, but this is probably not the case. In recent years another New Caledonian endemic, the New Caledonian Crow, has stolen headlines for its extraordinary levels of intelligence. Not only is it one of the select bands of birds that use tools to obtain food – it will take a stick to poke out grubs and insects from a hole, for example – but even more extraordinarily, it will actually fashion tools for itself. It has been known to strip a vine of all but its final thorn, for instance, and to make various hook-like implements. In the laboratory, New Caledonian Crows have been observed tailor-making instruments for specific jobs, suggesting that they possess exceptional cognitive skills. Clearly, over all those 85 million years, something very special happened on this small island.

The Kagu spends much of its time digging into the soil with its bill, searching for a variety of animal prey

As well as being the world’s most important site for Kagu, the lowland rainforests harbour a remarkable wider avifauna.

Barred Honeyeater is another of the New Caledonia endemics that may be encountered.