Living and Birding Gratitude: Indian Ocean Trip: Cocos/Keeling Islands Part Two

On Sunday we went canoeing over to South Island for first-timers to see the Saunders’s Terns. It is one of the only places to see them in Australia and they are there. I have seen them on the three times that I have been to Cocos. The trip over and back is as much of a thrill as the birds. The water is incredibly beautiful. It is also very shallow and the little outboards on the catamaran canoes hit bottom quite often as you motor across water mostly less than a metre deep.

On our way back we stopped at the little island where the Christmas Island Blue-tailed Skinks (extinct on Christmas Island) are thriving. I wrote about them and the wonderful snorkelling around the small island last year’s blog entry Click this link

Remembering what happened on which days gets confusing. But it doesn’t really matter. In all my writing I have worked to avoid the “and then we went here and saw this” telling of these tales. I know that we went to Home Island on Monday and that was my first visit to the clinic there and I began the antibiotics that I would end up taking for the next 13 days. I will skip the details of my infection. It did not ruin my trip to the islands, but it certainly affected my enjoyment and increased my anxiety, but I got through it.

There were a few bird rarities that had been seen fairly consistently before our arrival and of those Common Kingfisher was the one that I most wanted. The bird had been very cooperative before we arrived. It had often perched on a rock just off the beach, seeming to be posing for photos. It did not do that for us. And we looked and looked along that beach with the ‘rock’ repeatedly. It was a gorgeous area, but the Kingfisher wasn’t around.

Scanning the area at the Kingfisher spot, but it was not there (beautiful water though)

On Tuesday after having snacks and taking a group photo at the extremely cool Big Barge art gallery, we split up to bird around on West Island and see what we could find.

Judy Shore and me at the Big Barge

I was with Tania slowly driving through what is called the quarantine area when Richard called on the radio, (there is no mobile service on Cocos) and said, “Come now. I have the Kingfisher and the Pintail at the tank. Now”. I had seen that Northern Pintail several times previously, but boy I wanted to see that Common Kingfisher.

We were only about 400 metres from Richard’s location but the three or four minutes that it took to get there seemed to take ages as FOMO burned white-hot in my brain. We got there and very gratefully, I experienced stunning scope views of that truly beautiful Kingfisher. After loving it through the scope for a few moments, I took some rather underwhelming recording shots from across the paddock. The little bird was perched on the rim of the large concrete tank. But make no mistake, I was thrilled to get any sort of photo and as I said my views through the scope were wonderful (at this writing, I am still saving that Lifer Pie, but make no mistake, I will be having it in the coming days).

A couple of my recording shots

On Wednesday night, we had our ‘traditional’, Malayan dinner on Home Island. The usual restaurant was in the midst of renovations, so we had it outside the café where we had eaten lunch the other day. As in years past, the food was truly delicious.

The next day we had a last night on the island dinner at a restaurant on West Island and it was also delicious. In MABT (More Australian Birding Tales), I mentioned the homemade ice cream at the café on Cocos. This restaurant is run by the same guy who has the café. I was telling our delightful server about that and she gave me a little tub of the homemade ice cream that they were serving that night. It was lychee and coconut flavoured and it was absolutely wonderful. I ate it gratefully and ordered it again for my desert.

There was another bird that I badly wanted, but it was not to be. Although we certainly put forth a good effort. There had been a Watercock glimpsed at the ‘farm’ and we check there for it a lot, including some very early morning searches. We gave it a go on our last morning arriving in the dark and sitting quietly in the vehicles for the next couple of hours before finally giving up the stakeout and walking through the area one last time. Hope for that particular bird had faded.& “The pursuit of what is illusive, but attainable, a perpetual series of occasions for hope” is a portion of a John Buchan quote that is tattooed on my arm. He wrote it about fishing, but it is also perfect for birding. Yes, I had finally worn out my Watercock hope.

I had to make a couple more visits to the clinic on West Island including the morning of the day we flew to Christmas Island. That flight did not leave until just past 4pm so there was a lot of waiting involved. But leave we did. I will include a few more photos here.