1 September 2022 Thursday – Christmas Island day 3

Another early start with breakfast again at the Golden Bosun where we chat with a few different travellers. A Nankeen Kestrel is sitting on the radio tower across the road also having breakfast. Our first stop with our guide, David James, is at the Golf Course, it looks beautiful with coconut palms lining the course & looking out over the ocean. Dave walks us around the course to the various nests of Frigate birds & red-footed boobys, there are chicks at all various stages of growth & there are lots of sea birds flying overhead. Dave explains the geology of the island, it started out as an active volcano & over 80 million years the island has sunk below & re-emerged from the ocean with coral growing on top that has been compacted to limestone, some as deep as 250 metres. The various cliff terraces indicate heights of the sea level at various times.

The Mar Chor Nui Nui Temple is the next stop on the agenda, with a walk down a track to some blowholes, with one working nicely in the gentle swells gushing air & water out. The larger blowhole next to it has some fish clinging to the rock cliff with a mouth sucker, they apparently eat the algae on the damp rock. They are hard to spot being well camouflaged & about 10 cm long, but there are few of them clinging on & wriggling around to change location. On the rugged rocks nearby we spot a number of Brown Booby nest sites, these bird nests are on the ground, often on the cliffs near the ocean.

The Hidden Garden is next & has a fresh water dam & is the most popular place in the world for Frigate birds to have a drink of freshwater, according to Dave. Apparently the frigate birds have evolved for long distance flight & have no salt glands, so they have to drink fresh water. The dam is a hive of activity with all three species of the Frigate birds found on Christmas Island coming in for a drink. They swoop low then dip their beaks in to scoop up the water, we counted one of the frigate birds coming in for five drinks. They are very graceful in flight & amazingly manoeuvrable for such a large wingspan. There is a chookpen nearby with lots of chooks roaming around, one has a nest on the ground with about 15 eggs in it.

We then drive off down a narrow dirt track in the jungle through a canopy of lush rainforest. In one place we come into a sea of fishbone ferns, an old phosphate mine site that has not been rehabilitated & the weeds have taken over. There are giant pandanus trees with very long strappy leaves. We drop down off the escarpment down a long steep scree slope with the limestone formations changing as we get to the bottom. The forest vegetation looks amazing. All too soon we break back out onto the main road & stop at the Crab Bridge, designed so that the migrating red crabs can climb up & over the road. The edges of the road have high metal strips that guide the crabs along the roadside then over the bridge.

At the Crab Bridge we walk a small bit into the jungle edging the road & spot an old railway locomotive that has been left abandoned to rot in the jungle. It is amazing how the jungle is starting to overtake it. One of our guides told us that his brother worked on repairing that locomotive as it was damaged in a fire & he used the parts from two old locomotives to build this one in Perth, then it was shipped to the island to be used hauling phosphate from the mine to the processing plant.

Our lunch is at Territory Day Park, this park is high on the cliff & has a stunning view over Flying Fish Cove, the wharf & mine buildings plus the Settlement. There are lots of Frigate birds & Bosun birds flying & gliding below & in front of us. We are very fortunate in seeing so many absolutely beautiful Golden Bosun birds, they are stunning with their golden sheen & long trailing tail streamers. The Territory Day Park is also stunning with the trees covered in epiphytes growing along the trunks & branches of the trees. The picnic lunch is delicious again with nice cold meats & fresh salads & we talk with a few more of our fellow birders.

After lunch we drive down to the Dales, passing the Secure Detention Centre along the way, this place is a lot more serious than the Asylum Seeker lodgings, with barbed wire & very high fences. It houses prisoners that are being processed for deportation from Australia after committing serious crimes.

The Dales is a series of seven freshwater streams along the coast flowing into the ocean. It is crab central, with lots of red, blue & robber crabs, including lots of baby crabs in the freshwater streams. We take the walking track to Hughes Dale Waterfall, a gentle boardwalk through the stunning rainforest with lots & lots of steps & near the end some very steep steps. It is fairly humid under the canopy & we break out a sweat. The fresh water in the creeks has flowed through many layers of limestone & as it drops over the waterfall some of the calcium stays behind, hardens back to stone & forms a tufa flow down the creek bed. It looks just as if someone had poured cement along the creek bed. Dave tells us that this tufa is a living organism. One of our group has a shower under the waterfall. The walk out is mostly downhill & we see even more crabs of all sizes & variety, our eyes are becoming accustomed to picking them out amongst the tree roots & rocks lining the creek.

On the way back to town we spot a goshawk sitting on a mining sign.  We stop for some photos, it is not banded & it flies off as some of the group get a little close to it. Dinner tonight is at the Tracks Tavern & Dave gives us a very interesting talk on the formation of Christmas Island from 80 million years ago until the present. The island is growing slightly taller each year & is moving north slowly. The dinner was a delicious roast with a choice of chicken, pork or beef with lots of sides. A few had fish or vegetarian. We again had a nice chat with Lisa (the organiser of Christmas Island Bird’n’Nature Week) & her mum & Graham who are both helping out with breakfasts & lunches. We are very weary after the big day with lots of walking & are soon in bed, another great day.