UPDATE- 3-10 March 2008 (Second week on Cocos and CI)
After a week on Cocos we headed up to Christmas Island to try and locate the
vagrants that our group had found the previous week. The first stop, directly
from the airport was the rubbish tip but the local bulldozer was working next
to where we found the Chinese Pond Heron the week before so we headed up to
Murray Rd and found a few nesting Abbott's Boobies. Closing time at the tip
found us all getting nice views of the CHINESE POND HERON. We visited the site
several times and it was still there on the 10 March.
It was great to find the LESSER NODDIES still in Flying Fish Cove with 7 easily
seen on our second morning. The Cinnamon Bittern could not be relocated
dispite a couple of visits to Waterfall Cove and all endemics were easily seen.
Our most exciting find was a MALAYAN NIGHT HERON on the Winifred Beach Track.
We drove over a crest of hill and it was standing of the track in front of us.
Skidding to a halt we only just avoided running it over before it flew onto a
nicely sunlit branch above the road giving us great views.
There were no additional vagrants seen than those from last week.
CI birds:
20 Red-tailed Tropicbirds
40 White-tailed Tropicbirds
7 Abbott's Booby
300 Red-footed Booby
30 Brown Booby
100 Great Frigatebird
500 Christmas Frigatebird
7 X LESSER NODDY
1 x CHINESE POND HERON
1 x MALAYAN NIGHT HERON
2 Variable Goshawk
500 Linchi Swiftlets
20 Java Sparrow
+ Many other more common species.
Our seven days on Cocos and CI produced, Saunder's Tern, Pin-tailed Snipe,
Western Reef Egret, Chinese Pond Heron, Lesser Noddy and Malayan Night Heron.
An awesome list of rare species in only seven days.
I'm back to Cocos next week.
Future Trips:
Nov/Dec 08- 7 days CI and 4 days Cocos
March 09- 4 days Cocos and 3 days CI
Cheers
Richard Baxter
===============================
www.birding-aus.org
birding-aus.blogspot.com
To unsubscribe from this mailing list,
send the message:
unsubscribe
(in the body of the message, with no Subject line)
to:
===============================
|
