So the word Manus is again on everyone’s lips with the news PNG, the US and Australia are to develop the naval base. I first heard of the place in, I think, 1951or 1954 at an election meeting in West Geelong town hall
addressed by Robert Menzies. Menzies was still complaining that the Labor government had refused to accept a fully developed base there from the US at the end of WW2. I remember this because of the following exchange:
Menzies: And Manus went back to the jungle!
Interjector: Why don’t you?!
I have visited the naval station when it was under Australian administration, the relevance for present purposes being that it was named
HMAS Tarangau, ‘tarangau’ being the White-bellied Sea-Eagle in Melanesian pidgin. The tarangau emblem was (perhaps still is) prominently displayed at the base. This is one of our own local species, indeed one recorded in the 2016-2017 Garden Bird Survey
with a recording rate of 0.04. You will all know that the Bald Eagle emblem of the USA also depicts a sea-eagle, a relatively common bird around Washington DC.
You will probably not find Manus covered in most books on ‘New Guinea’ birds. However I might add that according to
The Birds of Northern Melanesia (Mayr E & Diamond J, 2001) Manus has 50 resident land and freshwater bird species with an ‘endemism index’ of 0.72.
