Best birding spot on Flores: Mbeliling Mountain Ecolodge

This lodge was built to supremely respect the surrounding nature, on the side of Mount Mbeliling, at an altitude of 900 meters asl. The spacious chalets with a high roof, allowing them to be fresh and bright, are harmoniously integrated with the forest landscape.

The view from the balcony of some chalets is just stunning. Miles of forests, the plain, the sea, the islands…

The balcony is an observatory in itself. We can see, often at close range, flowerpeckers, sunbirds, minivets, white-eyes, drongos, orioles, kingfishers, eagles, lorikeets, and many more.

In the morning, we sometimes hear the famous endemic crow and the Green Junglefowl. It’s really magic!

When we started early morning birdwatching at this place, it happened we stayed there until lunch!

The view from the restaurant terrace is just as lovely, and also offers possibilities for birding.

In the evening, owls can sometimes be seen. In the middle of the day, it is rather drongos, friarbirds, kingfishers, bee-eaters, lorikeets, flowerpeckers, and swiftlets that disturb the birders who are eating!

Our meals, cooked according to our wishes, mainly made with local ingredients and totally vegan, have proven to be excellent. The chef cooks tofu and tempeh very well, two products widely eaten in Indonesia. The place is, therefore, “vegan-friendly.”

However, it appears the printed menu gives only a few dishes free of animal products, and our primary recommendation to the lodge managers is to add several plant-based options on it to encourage customers to do without products from animal farming. We recall on our first front page here why animal farming is the primary cause of the loss of natural space and biodiversity (with scientific references) in the world.

Almost all around the lodge, we still see natural forests. Unfortunately, there are no longer so many preserved places in the world. Having access to it is a great opportunity that we appreciate every time.

The water flowing in the forest is of exceptional purity. It is clean, bright, and very fresh though we are in a warm and tropical country. At the lodge, we drink it daily.

The river accommodates a varied life that can flourish as long as the exploitation has not reached the place. Hopefully, the ecotourism activities of the ecolodge will be a sufficient justification to keep this region intact.

It is the whole strategy that we are trying to develop, given the economic priority of the system in place: we want tourism to see these exceptional places to provide sufficient financial income to justify the effective conservation of these natural environments. In Africa, the approach has proven efficient in some countries. Yet, the negative impact of tourism must be minimized, and this is precisely the principle of ecotourism as we understand it when it is done right.

Among the efforts made by Ecolodge Indonesia for the Mbeliling Mountain Lodge to lower their environment impact: you’ll find solar panels which allow the lodge to be electricity self-sufficient; there is the ecological management of the gardens, the composting, the use of local spring water; the restaurant doesn’t use single-use cups, straws and other disposable plastics, etc. Another very good point: all the staff is employed locally.

For a newly built lodge (it started operations in June 2019), this is a perfect step ahead of Indonesian standards. There are, of course, various possibilities for more projects, notably in the conservation of the local forest, and we hope to support the development of the lodge in this direction.

We present several pages about the birds occurring in the area, because we stayed there for a long time, in April 2020, in the middle of the Covid 19 crisis. In addition to the introduced birds, there are a whole widespread species that we will publish on other occasions, such as this Red-cheeked Parrot showing itself exceptionally well around the property.

Here are the pages available:

1. Flame-breasted Sunbird
2. Golden-rumped Flowerpecker
3. White-rumped Kingfisher
4. Flores Monarch
5. Flores Drongo
6. Thick-billed White-eye
7. Brown-capped Fantail
8. Rusty-breasted Whistler
9. Flores Crow
10. Flores Minivet
11. Flores Lorikeet
12. Wallacean Cuckooshrike
13. Dark-crowned White-eye
14. Little Cuckoo-Dove

There are not only birds around. A wide variety of friendly animals haunt the forests of Mount Mbeliling. See for example this flying lizard (species Draco boschmai) taken at the forest edge, near the lodge gardens.

It is more than likely that many endemic species that are not well known or even not yet described when invertebrates or even reptiles and amphibians are involved are to be studied in the region. Discovering, illustrating, and raising awareness of this wealth is essential for the public to understand the extraordinary interest in preserving all of this.

A word of advice to all travelers: stay as long as possible. The forest only reveals its secrets to patient observers. In such a natural environment, one can observe for weeks, and each day is the occasion for a new species, a unique photographic opportunity, or the observation of unusual behavior.

Let’s end our page with a photo of the Black-naped Fruit-dove (Ptilinopus melanospilus) taken less than 100 meters from the chalets. This Columbidae is also depicted in the inset of the banner at the very top of the page.

Visit ECOLODGE INDONESIA’s main website or directly MBELILING MOUNTAIN LODGE for more information.

Valéry Schollaert and Marinella Mejia, 30th of April 2020
with acknowledgment to the copy editor: Remy Ty