Birds

The snow-white, black-tipped feathers and sky blue eye patches of the Bali mynah make this one beautiful bird. It’s the only native bird on Bali, one of the Indonesian islands. In addition to being a beauty, it is also extremely rare: Fewer than 50 Bali mynahs remain in the wild, where they live in just one place, Bali Barat National Park.

This big bird can’t fly, but it sure can run. Like ostriches and cassowaries, emus are part of the ratite family, the most primitive of the modern birds. They come from Australia.

With their bright orange eyes set in white faces, white-faced scops owls, also called northern white-faced owls, have an entrancing gaze. They roost in trees during the day, and hunt by night. With their long, trilling call—a fluty “ploo pluuu”—white-faced scops owls sound a bit like American screech owls. But the scops owls are native to Africa, living between the fringes of the savannah and the Equator.