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Eastern Indonesia: The Red and Wilson’s Birds of Paradise
My primary reason for heading to eastern Indonesia was to have the opportunity to view species in the family Paradisaeidae – i.e, the Birds of Paradise. These birds have always had a near-mythical status to me. I have studied and admired them from books and videos but actually seeing one has long seemed out of…
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Eastern Indonesia: Waigeo
Waigeo is a largely unspoiled island that is just north of the northwestern tip of New Guinea. It’s the largest island of the Raja Ampat archipelago, and is the only island in the group with any roads at all. It also has a small town and some small homestays / beach resorts. These resorts aren’t…
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Eastern Indonesia: West Papua (New Guinea)
Back to blogging! The next stop on the tour was Sorong, a city in the Indonesian province of West Papua, which is on far west side of the island of New Guinea. I’ve always been fascinated with this island due to its diverse people, landscapes, and wildlife. It is home to some of the most…
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Eastern Indonesia: Halmahera
The next stop on the tour was the island of Halmahera, which was formerly called Gilolo. Getting to Halmahera is a bit of a process. There aren’t any major airports on the island itself, so first you have to fly to the city of Ternate, on the island of the same name. Ternate is a…
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Eastern Indonesia: Sulawesi Part II
After Lore Lindu, we headed back to the city of Palu and stayed a night there before heading to Manado. The hotel in Palu (Sultan Raja) was quite nice. I left a hat behind there and the hotel staff actually contacted the tour leader about it and had it sent to the last hotel we…
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Eastern Indonesia: Sulawesi Part I
It’s been a couple of weeks since I returned from my latest adventure: a trip to eastern Indonesia. Specifically, it covered the islands of Sulawesi, Halmahera, New Guinea, and Waigeo. What made me want to visit that area of the world in particular? The bird life is one of the big reasons, particularly the Birds…
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Botswana Part II: Chobe National Park, Plus Victoria Falls (Zimbabwe)
The second time I crossed over into Botswana was with a separate tour I took out of Victoria Falls. The birding tour ended in Victoria Falls, but I decided to stay there for an extra couple of days. For one of the days, I went on a tour of Chobe National Park. I booked it…
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Botswana Part I: Okavango Panhandle
I spent most of my trip to Africa in Namibia, but I did cross over into neighboring Botswana a couple of times. The first time was with the birding group. We spent a few nights at a secluded lodge along the Okavango River in northern Botswana. We took a short boat ride to get to…
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Namibia: Kavango and Zambezi Regions (featuring hippos, bee-eaters, and strangler figs).
After the visit to Etosha National Park, we headed through the Kavango and Zambezi regions of Namibia, which are located in the northeastern part of the country. This region of Namibia is much greener and more densely populated than the south, in part due to the presence of two major permanent rivers: the Kavango and…
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Birding in Etosha National Park (Namibia Trip)
Etosha National Park in Namibia is famous for its astonishing diversity of large mammals, but it is also home to an impressive variety of birds, from tiny finches to giant ostriches. Many of these birds are easy to find and photograph because of the abundance of open country in the park. Bustards (family Otididae), including…
Peace Country Naturalist
Hello, and welcome to my blog and website! I am Jessie and I am a biology instructor at Northwestern Polytechnic (formerly Grande Prairie Regional College) in northern Alberta, Canada. I teach university-transfer courses, including introductory courses in biology and second-year courses in evolutionary biology, botany, and animal physiology.
The blog associated with this site will feature posts on natural history (especially of Alberta and British Columbia, but also of other places I may travel to), ecology, hiking, evolution, dogs, and exotic pets. I often place trail cameras out in the bush to captures images of wildlife, and many posts will feature those pictures. I also use autonomous recording units to monitor vocal bird species and will post about those projects in the future as well.
I will also sometimes post items I have written for the students I teach, if I think they will be of general interest.
The latest blog posts are linked to below:
Peace Country Naturalist 