Bird Walk in Ubud

We wanted to see something more rural and found a delightful bird walk tour through the rice-fields and along little trails with Wayan, who was trained by a famous birder of Bali - Victor Mason - whose book "Birds of Bali" is one of my prized books that have accompanied me on this trip - so I was delighted to walk in his footsteps so to speak, with one of his former students. We had a lovely morning, hot and humid as it was, but we soon forgot the heat as Wayan pointed out every bird, butterfly, spider, herb and plant we encountered. She was a wealth of knowledge and we were blessed by the sighting of a couple of one of the most spectacular birds of Bali - the Java Kingfisher - it is an explosion of the most brilliant blues and purples with a big bright red beak - beautiful! We were just three ladies on the walk, Jan and myself and a lovely japanese lady, who had spent the last 20+ years living in rural Turkey!
We ended the walk with a true balinese lunch at a little Warung (restaurant) right on the river, and it was so delicious and beautifully arranged. It tasted especially good after a long walk, even though we did get a refreshing drink of young coconut milk fetched up in a tall palm tree by a local farmer, who opened a couple for us and he had some ingenious way of cutting the shell to make a funnel from which to drink! He looked old, but the way he climbed that tree was quite astonishing!