Cocos (Keeling) Islands; November

Cocos Islands thanks to Google Earth. The name tags are a bit off. Home Island is where Bantam Village is and Direction Island is where Home Island is marked.

The flight from Christmas Island to Cocos takes about 2 hours and there is never a problem landing, unless there is a cyclone happening as was the case in 2013 when the airport was closed for a week. The runway is about 3 km long and 1 metre above sea level. It is so low that in a cyclone and heavy rain water from the lagoon can bubble up through the surface.

Red-throated Pippit

Oriental Plover to right and Oriental Pratincole.

Oriental Plover and Grey Plover

The other thing that makes the runway interesting is that it bisects the local golf course. When planes aren't scheduled players tee up on one side and play to the hole on the opposite side. The grass around the edge of the runway is also perfect habitat for the Pin-tailed Snipe that are found on the island.

Pin-tailed Snipe

White-winged tern, perhaps the first record for the island

Western Reef Egret

Richard, the trip organiser, has an excellent network of birders on Cocos so when we landed we already knew of a "small brown bird in the grass beside the runway" as well as four other vagrants on Home Island. The walk from the airport to the motel is about 100 metres so we signed in and immediately jumped in the rental van and headed for the "small brown bird". Within 5 minutes I was looking at what turned out to be a Red-throated Pipit and a new bird for me.

Green Junglefowl, male

Green Junglefowl, female and young

White-breasted Waterhen juvenile

White-breasted Waterhen

For the rest of the afternoon we cruised West Island in the van and found an Oriental Plover, 2 Grey Plover and 5 Oriental Pratincole, all on the runway. New comers to the island also ticked of the dozens of White-breast Waterhen and Green Junglefowl that run all over the island.

Ocean coast of South Island

West Island is where the airport, weather station, High School, tourist accommodation and other facilities are and Home Island is where the Malay population lives and have a junior school. To get to Home Island there is a ferry that runs on a regular basis moving the kids to and from school and birders to a huge number of places where vagrant birds like to hang out. The smaller islands, including Horsburgh, Direction and South are uninhabited.

In past years we had to walk all over West Island but this year we had the luxury of using the electric island Tourist Bus

White Tern with fish for young at "nest". They actually don't build a nest, they lay their single egg on a flat pice of branch

Javan Pond Heron as it flew off into the distance

The "lucky" shot of the trip as it flushed so fast I couldn't lift the camera to aim so just pressed the button and hoped.

The first places we search each visit are the grounds of "The Big House" (there are some wonderful pictures if you Google Oceania House Cocos Island) and then the large area on the island set aside for vegetable gardens and poultry. This time the Big House had a Chinese Sparrowhawk and a Hodgson's Hawk Cuckoo. The veg gardens gave us a Javan Pond Heron and a pair of Asian Koel. The pond heron was special for me because it was there on my last visit and I missed it. I had been sitting with friends and walked off to look for a reported raptor when calls came; my friends had a pond heron in the gardens, at the extreme east of the island, then a second call came "Blue & White Flycatcher" at the Big House, at the extreme west of the island – and I was caught half way between. I moved east for the pond heron, stopped, turned and ran for the flycatcher. I saw the flycatcher and then we saw it every day. I was never in the right place for the pond heron and dipped. This time I saw it twice, in breeding plumage.

Direction Island from Home Island

Another day was set aside for the canoe trip to find the Saunder's Terns that live on a sand bank off Telok Sebrang. Normally we walk for a kilometre or so through knee-deep water to get to the terns but this time we saw they were closer. We stopped and I set my scope up so everyone got to see them and then we started walking. About two minutes later the birds flushed and the last time we saw them was as they slowly turned into black spots on the horizon, never to be seen again. Consolation of the walk was to watch hundreds of waders on the sandbanks.

Nankeen Night Heron, having a bad feather day

A very distant photo of the Chinese Goshawk

Cuckoo, probably Himalayan based on bill colour but could be an Oriental

A side trip on West Island was to see the Common Redshank. It can be seen by walking for about 100 metres across the lagoon at low tide. This should be easy but there are hidden pockets of really soft mud. One minute you are on firm but soft muddy sand and the next, up to the knee in mud that clings so tight that it can suck the shoe right off your foot as you try and get out. But the Redshank is worth seeing so we put up with it.

Eastern Reef Egret fishing in the lagoon .......

but the Black-tipped Reef Shark was also interested in getting a feed of egret

The rest of the week was spent looking for more vagrants. A couple of small birds were seen but not identified on Home Island and one was flushed on West Island. The Eurasian Teal was still on the West Island swamp and we also found an Oriental (or Himalayan) Cuckoo and a Dollarbird.

Common Sandpiper and juvenile Nankeen Night Heron

The asian race of Drongo

Sunset over the Indian Ocean from my room at the motel

Birding during the week was made hard because there was a strong easterly wind blowing. This wind is normal, it's the trade wind, but by December it is usually dying down but not this year. Birds don't like windy days because it is hard for them to see or hear predators approaching through the swaying branches. For this reason our "little brown birds" stayed hidden. I have heard since that one of them was a Dark-sided Flycatcher and another a Blue & White Flycatcher. Sigh, I will just have to go back again (smile).

Cocos Island Crabs

These guys live in burrows and seem to like fresh vegetation

These guys seem to like the inter-tidal areas

Crab on the foreshore

Fiddler Crabs sparring

Hermit Crab

There are millions of Fiddler Crabs in the lagoons

Ghost Crab

All text & images © Jenny Spry 

Christmas Island November

Location with thanks to Google Earth. Ashmore Reef can also be seen

Two of my favourite birding places are Christmas Island (CI) and the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, off the west coast of Australia. As territories of Australia, birds seen on these island are on the Australian birding lists, even though they are closer to Indonesia than Australia. I guess they are our equivalents to Attu and Adak for the American ABA birders. Attu is some 700 km from the Russian Kamchatka Peninsula and Christmas Island is some 350 km from the coast of Java. The Cocos Islands are some 1,000 km from Java. Both CI and Attu are about 1500 km from their respective mainlands.

"Golden Bosunbird". The golden race of the White-tailed Tropicbird

Another similarity is that getting to the islands is controlled by the weather. Sitting at home in Melb I saw that the forecast for CI was rain, and this was not good. The top of CI is a plateau about 350 metres above sea level and in rainy weather clouds sit right on the plateau, and the airstrip. If the plane can't land it just circles and then flies on to Djakarta in Indonesia. People going to CI are recommended to take their passports or they might have to spend a night sleeping in the plane on the runway.

Christmas Island Imperial Pigeon

Red Collared Dove

Red-tailed Tropicbird

Female Christmas Island Frigatebird

As we approached CI the pilot announced that the cloud was low and landing could be impossible. He would try three times and then fly to Djakarta, he said with an apology. As it happened though, as we made our first approach the clouds lifted off the runway and we landed. The sight was spectacular because we were flying in cloud and then suddenly we were in clear sky with tall coastal cliffs and dark green jungle just below us, and a solid, dark layer of cloud just above us. Thirty minutes later, as we loaded our bags into the cars, the cloud had settled back down onto the runway and it was raining. The Birding Goddesses were looking after us (smile).

Island Thrush

Brown Goshawk race natalis. It used to be a species "Variable Goshawk" and many people say it should still be.

Common Emerald Dove

Watching for swifts

November is a good time for birding on CI because it ties in with the northern hemisphere migration season and some birds can either overshoot their normal wintering grounds or get blown off course. One draw back, however, is that November and December are the months when the Red Crabs spawn and millions of them make the annual migration from the plateau and hills of the island to the ocean. When this happens, usually when the first rains arrives, all but a few main roads on the island are closed to traffic, so the crabs don't get squashed. Crab migration is a great spectacle if you want to see the crabs migrate but a disaster if you want to look for birds. As we had arrived the day after the first rain in 2 months the roads were closed. Cry.

Red Crab migration

The fence is meant to keep the crabs off the road, but it doesn't always work

Taken in 2010. Female at beach with eggs

Female allowing waves to wash eggs free and into ocean. She has to be careful because, as a land crab, she can not swim and will be drowned if she is washed into the water. The crab in background may be in trouble.

But the birds were still there, both the endemics and the vagrants so one can't be upset. The "Golden Bosun-birds" (gold race of the White-tailed Tropicbird) soar over the cove and Settlement. Frigatebirds and Red-footed Booby roost in the trees on the escarpment and, on this trip, our first vagrant, a Red Collared Dove was waiting for us on the grass in front of some houses in town.

Christmas Island Swiftlet. Almost impossible to photograph

Abbott's Booby, found only on Christmas Island

Abbott's Booby nest only in the tops of emergent forest trees

Adult Brown Goshawk

Christmas Island Imperial Pigeon

Red Junglefowl. Few, if any, pure birds left on island. This bird is close to pure with white spot on lappet and white feathers on rump

Watching birders enjoy their first visit to the island is also fun as they "oh wow!" at their first sight of a Golden Bosun, then try to sort distant frigatebirds into Christmas, Greater and Lesser. They then stand open-mouthed as they watch them drink by dragging their lower mandible through the water as they fly low over the puddles. Sorting vagrant swifts and martins from the local Christmas Island Swiftlet is also fun as they fly fast and never in a straight line. Just as they enter the binoculars or camera view finder they zig, then zag, then do a double zag and all you are left looking at is blue sky. Conversely, the Emerald Doves like nothing better than a dark roadside in the jungle from where they can skulk away into obscurity.

Java Sparrow. There used to be lots but we struggled to find them this trip

Christmas Island White-eye

Moth Swarm

On the island they are called "Swell Moths" because they arrive when the ocean swells at the island are largest

Varied Eggfly Butterfly

A Gold Orb spider, but I don't know which species.

For the first-time visitors the new birds came fast and even for me and the other repeat visitors the lure of the unexpected is always there. Standing on a road looking for swifts a sudden cry of "there! there! swift!!" got us running, but only 2 people saw it as it disappeared behind trees, never to be seen again. Later as we looked again for swifts a large raptor glided on flat wings along a ridge in the distance and down out of sight before anyone could get a photo. Another bird never seen again. Birding on CI is both exhilarating and exasperating. The number of seen but not identified birds also gets one thinking about just how many vagrants might be on the islands; there are just so many places one can't reach by car or foot, all covered in thick rainforest and precipitous escarpments.

Phosphate strip mine on the island

The supply ship "Island Trader". There is no harbour and ships need good weather to unload. The gantries are the Phosphate loading conveyors. "Settlement" and the main road. Our accommodation is at the far end.

Nodes on the mooring rope of the Island Trader

Young Frigatebird flying over coral reefs in "The Cove" near the ship loader

I ended the week with 2 new species for my list, Red Collared Dove and Red-rumped Swallow and saw a total of 30 species, which wasn't too bad for my 5^th visit (smile). Some people on their first visit added over a dozen species to their lists.

"Blue Crab" feeding on a flower

Purple Crab

Robber Crab. They come in red ......

..... and in blue. Part of their diet is coconuts and they can rip the husk of a coconut and break the shell to get at the flesh. They are larger than a coconut

Hiking out to the "Blowholes"

Frigate bird drinking from a rainwater pool on one of the cleared mine sites.

All images & text © Jenny Spry