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Conference Birding - Mauritius 12- 17 Oct 2017 (1 Viewer)

MKinHK

Mike Kilburn
Hong Kong
I'm sitting on my balcony watching a sliver of orange sunset between the bottom of a solid bank of grey cloud and a darkening Indian Ocean through the leafless but seed pod-loaded branches of an acacia an occasional hulking Mauritius Flying Fox floats gently towards the palm trees while a gang of introduced Village Weavers decide whether or not to make a serious effort to establish the acacia as a new colony. Not a bad way to end a day after two and a half days of discussing environmental issues in airport management in a seaside resort in (mostly) sunny Mauritius!

So far the rarity highlight has apparently been a Common Sandpiper that flew along the beach yesterday and today - according to Avibase they are very rare or accidental on Mauritius. Does anyone know how rare they really are here?

The highlight of the commoner local birds so far has been a dozen or so White-tailed Tropicbirds floating over the forest of the Black River Gorges National Park. I also heard, but did not see the Pink Pigeon and both heard and saw several Echo Parakeets on the walk down form the park gate at le Petrin to the Black River Gate some 12 km downhill. Other birds seen that morning included a dozen or so Mauritius Grey White-eye, too many Red-whiskered Bulbuls, Mauritius Swiftlet and an as yet unidentified Fody, which I'd hoped might turn out to be Mauritius Fody - but the ID is not conclusive.

Birding around the hotel (Sofitel in Flic en Flac) has delivered a few more birds. These include the resident colony of six or so Mascarene Martins, including one I caught collecting grass for nest building from the back lawn. For no clear reason they also like to perch on the two speedboats moored out in front of the hotel in the evenings.

Other birds are mostly introduced species, including the Village Weavers, ten or so very showy Madagascar Fodies, Spotted, Laughing and Madagascar Turtle Doves, half-a-dozen Yellow-fronted Canaries, two Common Waxbills, and gaggles of Common Mynahs, House Sparrows and Red-whiskered Bulbuls. A pair of Egyptian Geese have raised abroad of six goslings in the pond below reception which is also stalked by a more genuinely wild Striated Heron.

Cheers
Mike
 

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Nice shots Mike. See if you can beat my 46 species in two weeks record from Mauritius! Possibly the worst place I've ever been for birding, although there are a few good things there.
 
Nice shots Mike. See if you can beat my 46 species in two weeks record from Mauritius! Possibly the worst place I've ever been for birding, although there are a few good things there.

How come all your conferences seem to be in rather nice exotic locations and not Birmingham for example? :)

Oooh! I only managed 34! Couldn't set my own agenda unfortunately, so didn't get the chance to target much, but did manage a few days on Rodrigues too. Looking forward to the rest of this, hope you did well, although I share Andrew's sentiment that, although there's a handful of exciting and iconic rarities, there are very many better places to bird, such as Birmingham for example :)
 
How come all your conferences seem to be in rather nice exotic locations and not Birmingham for example? :)

Jos - I have indeed been fortunate and/or made the best of the location.

Our conferences are held where airports are willing to host them, and (to some extent) where the committees I sit on prefer to go. Mauritius successfully bid to hold the World Annual General Assembly, so here we all are! In an exclusive announcement 'm pleased to share that Brussels was outvoted in favour of Oslo for our next meeting.

The exceptions are when I host in HK (twice) and . . . Qatar in May this year. My few spare hours there were spent driving to what was supposed to be a settling pond serving as a magnet for thirsty migrants, but turned out to be a highway construction site, and there was almost nothing in the vicinity of the hotel due to more construction and no garden. As a result . . . no birds and no report.

Jeff - Justice can - in this case anyway - take a long walk off a short pier!

Andrew and James - the species count is low indeed - a staggering 11 out of the paltry 25 species seen are introduced species! Just no time to look hard for the endemics this time - including Mauritius Kestrel, so there will be some notable gaps, but a few seabirds coming up in the next post adds some glorious lustre to a pretty bare ornithological cupboard.

Cheers
Mike
 
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Fair point. And to be honest, my trips to Korea get me frequent flyer mileage for al my trips to go birding around the world.
 
My final day of birding was a catamaran cruise from Grand Baie at the northern tip of Mauritius to two offshore islands - Gunner's Quoin and Gabriel Island - in the hope of finding some seabirds. By joining a boat with lots of other people this is expensive but not outrageously so - about USD100 per person including an open bar, an excellent lunch and free use of snorkelling kit. We were out for almost seven hours and in addition to the seabirds, of which more below, we also saw three different sea turtles and hand great views of a female Humpback Whale and her calf.

We started seeing terns within a few minutes of entering the blue waters outside the reef - a mixture of Sooty Terns and noddies which I believe were mostly Lesser Noddies, although one I photographed looks like a Brown Noddy. We also had close fly-bys from several Wedge-tailed Shearwaters, which must be one of the commoner birds I've never conclusively ticked, despite being in range on numerous occasions.

But there is no questions that it was the tropicbirds that really stole the show. Scores of Red-tailed Tropicbirds were soaring round the 160m-high cliffs on the eastern side of Gunner's Quoin. Despite most, if not all, being in full breeding plumage the slender red streamers were often difficult to pick out against both the cliff and the bright sky, contributing to a rather thickset, foreshortened jizz, that was heightened by the wing position being rather far back on the body and the sturdy neck and short tail.

By contrast the White-tailed Tropicbirds were creatures possessed of a truly otherworldly beauty. More slender, graceful and finely proportioned, with their broader and longer streamers looking like a dart of pure white light against the incredibly blue sky they completely blew me away - and instantly entered my top three birds of all time. There were a few pairs around Gunner's Quoin, and forty or so over our lunchtime stop at Gabriel Island, including several birds that were flying low among the casuarina trees. When looking up to see them overhead they reminded me irresistibly of a hatch of pure white mayflies dipping and floating above above the polished darkness of an evening river. Truly magical!

We had one more morning watching Bottle-nosed Dolphins and Spinner Dolphins off the southern coast from Le Morne, which provided a fine finale to the trip, even if nothing could come close to those White-tailed Tropicbirds!

Cheers
Mike
 

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