Christmas Island - Part Two
A quick note on the crabbies… there are about 20 species of ‘land crabs’ on Christmas Island. The most famous (and by far the most abundant) are the Red Crabs (Gecarcoidea natalis) which occur across the island in all habitats in the hundreds of millions and migrate to and from the sea each year to spawn. Pretty much everywhere you go on the island you’ll be within a few meters of a Red Crab. I saw three other species on the trip – the massive, rainbow-coloured Robber Crabs were probably my favourite.
While we were on the island, the baby Red Crabs started returning from the sea in their millions, and many roads and tracks were closed as a result. I was fine with that! The little crabbies were so cute, and they got everywhere. I hated having to drive near (read: over) them, but there were literally billions. Photos can’t do it justice; it was an amazing sight to see them parading past into the forest every day.
24/12/2022
During their stakeout of the chicken coop in Settlement, the Wnorowski’s had seen a “small yellow bird, like a Canary” the day before. This could, realistically, only be a mega… after interrogating them at dinner the previous night Richard was pretty convinced that the bird they had seen was a Bunting of some kind. Obviously, we staked out the coop again. After about two hours on site with no sign most of us rolled out to go hunting, leaving Glen perched on the wall above the coop smoking like a chimney.
We headed up the plateau and had a look around some of the jungle tracks before Richard got a call from Glen – he had seen the bird! Back down the hill we went and set up the stakeout again. I lasted until lunchtime but had no luck… after Glen bailed, I gave it another 15 min and loped home. Slurping down a can of 100+ and some noodlies helped and I was back out hunting vagues with Bill by 1300. We checked the Shrike site first out of habit but there was nothing to be seen, so we headed up to the quarry again. Driving in I saw a dark looking raptor circling up at 1 o clock from the car. I jumped on the brakes and was out with bins in hand looking at a cracking EURASIAN HOBBY. Only the second one I had ever seen! Bill was out of the car and onto it pretty quickly too and I grabbed the camera and fired off some shots as it gained height and headed off towards the airport.
A good start to the arvo hunt! I messaged Richard to relay the sighting and received a typically laconic response from the Zen birding master. Bill and I had a look around the quarry and a few nearby tracks, getting some awesome views of a big Robber but not much else. That afternoon we were back at the Shrike site with the rest of the crew and ended up chasing some Swifts around for a couple of hours. There were three ‘big’ swifts seen that arvo, which all turned out to be Pacifics in the end but got the blood pumping for a while! Frustratingly, a large all-dark swiftlet was seen briefly mixing it up with some CI Swiftlets while we chased the PASW around, but we never really got a good enough look to even guess at an ID.
It was back to Lucky Ho that night for another excellent dinner (and an amazing, icy-cold avocado smoothie) before we headed out spotlighting as a group. I was actually feeling pretty tired by the time we got out there but soon got my second wind. We had all pax and all three cars and we were going to hit 5 sites. It wasn’t until we got to our second last site (up at the quarry) that things got interesting. Richard played the calls of the target vagues… SANI, GRNI, EUSC, NOBO… nothin’. Most punters were back in the cars and dozing when Richard suggested I have a look at the ‘snipe pool’ down below with the thermal. I fired it up and was amazed to see a Snipe running around full tilt! Presumably it was chasing moths or smth around the quarry. Pretty cool to see. And then… I was stunned by a distant growling call. It was NOBO!!! Richard could hear it too, so we moved towards it in the cars and tried the tape again but it had shut up shop for the night. There was lots of door slamming, hooting, hollering etc from the pax so that wasn’t surprising… Tomorrow I would return.
25/12/2022
For our Christmas present, Richard took us to the rubbish dump We had a little look around there but birds were pretty thin. Feral snails (and rats) were thick on the ground however. After having some brekky I filled up the water bottles and plonked myself down in front of the coop to wait for the (by now, near-mythical) Bunting. I tried to focus only on the coop and not worry about what the others might be seeing… eventually, I managed to get into a fairly solid Zen birding trance… I’d had enough after four hours though. The Bunting was never seen again, but I’d learned a valuable birding lesson – the importance of patience. I had a shower back at the room and sat vegetating in the aircon for about 15 minutes before it was time to start preparing Xmas lunch.
It was a nice team effort to get the lunch ready but I still want to give a special shout out to Lynda! We sat down together to enjoy our feast and were still at the table swapping war stories and chewing two hours later! For dessert, I drowned some Christmas Pudding in custard and then staggered back to my room for a quick nap. I emerged shortly after to find the Canberrans some Barn Swallows before taking the die-hards up to the Territory Day Park to look for wagtails etc. We had a nice close encounter here with a Fruit-bat who was eating a mango and then went down to the lookout where we watched some flying around. I noticed that the road down to the jetty was open and people were swimming – that was me done for the arvo. I dropped the others back at the motel and gave them the keys before grabbing my togs, snorkel and GoPro (thanks J) and heading down to the jetty.
Stepping off the jetty into the warm water I was very happy. This was an ocean tick for me! It was insane to be able to walk 50m down the jetty from the carpark, jump into the water and be swimming above a crippling coral reef covered in fishies. I stayed in the water until sunset, enjoying my swim immensely. Now that the jetty was open again I’d try to swim every day. We reconvened on dusk to gobble up the leftovers from lunch and I tried to be quick – the NOBO was waiting for me. Sue and Bill were the only pax interested in coming out after dinner, so we got our gear together and got up to the site by about 2100.
In contrast to the previous night, we were very very sneaky on approach and upon getting out of the car. I’d been a bit bossy with the others regarding noise and light discipline and so it was (as I wished) in the dark and silence that I quietly played the call of Northern Boobook. My heart was racing! The final call on the tape I’d downloaded from xeno finished and I scanned the forest with the thermal… nothing. I whispered to the others “I’ll try once more and see if we get a response”. I played the call again and again, nothing. Bugger. I scanned the canopy with the thermal again but couldn’t make anything out. “I’m gonna have a look with the torch now” I whispered and turned on the Wolf Eyes, scanning the forest edge from left to right. As I neared the end of the sweep – wow! Eyeshine from the top of a dead tree! I was straight onto it with the bins and looking at a Northern Boobook! A very exciting feeling Bill got onto it relatively quickly, but Sue couldn’t see it well enough, so I turned off the torch and we crept forward another 10m or so. I checked with the thermal – now I knew where it was, I could pick it up.
I whispered to the others to focus on the silhouette of the dead tree and waited until they were ready before I lit the owl up. It sat for a second, turned to look at us and took off. I watched it fly through the bins and tracked it left behind a tree… it never came out the other side! I thought we would find it perched, but we never saw it again. An awesome Christmas present regardless. People don’t tend to go out at night much on these trips, which I understand – the days are pretty full on, and I was feeling trashed after three late nights in a row. But I reckon if you put in the effort in summer you have a decent shot at connecting with NOBO these days – the species has been seen four out of the last five years since Angus found the first one.
26/12/22
I slept in a bit on Boxing Day and didn’t do my usual lap of Settlement prior to the others getting up. We all headed out in a group to check out an ex-mine site near the quarry which looked like it had a lot of potential for vagues but found nowt. We tried to get down to some of the beaches, but all the roads were still closed… the crabbies were severely limiting our ability to get around the island! We headed back to Settlement to fuel up the cars (the petrol station was going to be closed for a few days) and had some wraps for brekky with the leftovers from the Christmas feast.
After breakfast we headed back up the hill, rumbling a freshly arrived Black Bittern which looked good for the nominate race. A bittersweet mega ticklet… much rarer than CIBI or VSBI. Dammit! We all spun a lap through the farm where I saw my first Lesser Frigate of the trip. We heard on the grapevine that the golf course road had been opened up so headed down for a look before lunchtime. Not much going on, but it was very hot, and we planned to return the next morning in better conditions for MEGAs. Lunch for me was half a Christmas Pudding floating in custard… greedy guts After a nap we split up to go hunting and Glen and I ended up down at the blowholes (the track was opened while we had lunch). Some amazing looking forest down there – very tall and cathedral-like. The blowholes were unreal too and sounded like angry sea dragons. On our way back home we had a poke around an old mine puddle and rumbled another Yellow Bittern. Pretty cool – we got the word out and one of the other cars twitched it. We said hi to the Shrike again and then went home. I went for another swim and, after dinner (noodlies), zipped up to the Territory Day Park where I managed to find a single Giant Gecko. I also reconnected with the mystery birds I’d seen on the rec centre oval with the thermal while we were out with Richard on Christmas eve – they were Snipe!
27/12/22
After my customary patrol of Settlement in the early morning I joined the others for a look around the Golf Course. Baby crabbies crawled all over me as I sat in the grass Zenbirding. A constant stream of them were moving into the forest – amazing to see. The highlight of the morning birding was probably hearing the CI Frigate’s bizarre call about a dozen times. We headed back for some brekky without having seen a new bird for the trip… so Bill and I had a quick look up at the gun emplacements again but soon retreated – it was fiendishly hot. I went for a final snorkel before returning to the room to pack. We had nervously been eyeing the forecast as a storm was predicted for the afternoon, but it never came to fruition (thank Poseidon).
We got up to the airport and checked in with no dramas. We had about an hour to wait for the flight and most of us sat outside in the shade and talked about Christmas Island. I’d had a fantastic time there – it was awesome. A truly multicultural place with super friendly people and a very relaxed feeling. The structure of the forest and the landscape was totally new to me, like nothing I’d ever seen, and I had really enjoyed exploring and hunting vagues. Thanks to the crabbies, I still had plenty of new places to see on the island! I knew I’d be back again and so this was definitely a case of au revoir. It was time to make a triumphant return to Cocos…
