Rare, endemic, and unusual are all pretty special words to the twitchers or birdwatchers of the world. In the Kingdom of Tonga, millennia of isolation and many untouched remote islands conspire to make it one of the South Pacific’s best locations to observe unique avian species in the wild.
On the tiny island of Maninita in the northern Vava’u group, vast numbers of sea birds nest, their survival boosted by the excellent work of local enthusiasts in ridding the ancient forested atoll of destructive vermin. Maninita is now one of the South Pacific’s most important sea bird breeding environments, and its birdlife remains easy to view and unaffected by human influences.
