3 September 2022 Saturday – Christmas Island day 5

Chris is guiding us today in his small bus to look for the Abbotts Booby.  After another good breakfast we head off.  We stop at the National Park entrance just outside the road into the Detention Centre. We spot a nest with an adult Abbotts Booby in it as soon as we pull up, it is very high up in the tree & is a little difficult to see. We then set off into the forest down a track, the forest floor is very clean & there are thousands of red crabs around as there was a little rain overnight & lots have emerged from their burrows. We spot one red crab eating a flower that had fallen, unusual as they usually eat leaves. There are also a few large robber crabs that we spot as we get a little deeper into the jungle, one of them is an amazing blue colour. We spend a bit of time looking up for the Abbotts Booby nests & we spot a few before heading back out to the road.

A little further along the road there are trees that have lots of the Abbotts Booby nesting & there are adults flying into the nests, feeding the chicks, then flying off again. These birds are magnificent in flight with a very long wingspan & they crash into the outer branches when landing, then walk their way along the branch to the nest. They have an unusual call, very loud & distinctive.  The Abbotts Booby is very rare & is found only on Christmas Island with only around 3,000 breeding pairs. We are very privileged to see them.

Our morning tea stop at LB4 Lookout picnic area is also surrounded by trees with Abbotts Booby nests. We are surrounded by birds flying in & out & hearing the distinctive calls. We are also treated to a display of butterflies, with lots of them flying around the picnic area. The table & chairs are special as they have been made from 300Kg of recycled plastic collected from the beaches of Christmas Island. There are also several large Robber Crabs appear after smelling our morning tea, apparently their sense of smell is ten times better than a dog.

We drive next back to the Blowholes to see a Brown Booby chick that is next to the boardwalk. It is out sitting in plain sight, none of our group saw it the day before, we were obviously too engrossed with the amazing spectacle of the blowholes roaring & gushing seawater high into the air. We are now engrossed with the chick sitting on the bare rock, however, the lure of the roaring & gushing blowholes draws us back to enjoying them one more time, they are amazing.

Lunch is at Soon Tiang Kong Temple on South Point that we visited yesterday & again lunch is a fresh bread roll with meats & salad, delicious. Afterwards we stopped at the nearby old South Point Railway ruins, a collection of derelict buildings with a simple railway station. The township of South Point had around 3,000 people living in it up until 1972 when the township was bulldozed to extract the phosphate the town was sitting on. The displaced people were relocated to Poon San, half way up the hill from the Settlement.

We drove nearly all the way into the Settlement to Phosphate Hill & stopped on Quarry Road. There is a very steep & treacherous track through the forest leading to the Golf Course Lookout. This track takes us through an old Chinese cemetery where the decayed old limestone headstones have all been replaced with new stone. After the cemetery the track becomes very steep & we have to be very careful walking. The golf Course Lookout is spectacular with stunning views south over the Golf Course. The spot has lots of seabirds flying past all the time heading back to nests to feed chicks. There is a constant procession of birds & we see all of the major seabirds, some of them getting very close to us. It is extremely windy & cool up here & cloud starts to come in, with birds that are flying higher disappearing into the clouds. We watch enthralled for ages before it is time to head back. The walk back up the track is strenuous with lots of rest stops on the way back up, it is hard work. The cloud is drifting across the road when we reach the bus & when we drive back past the airport the runway is not visible because of the thick cloud.

Tereza is in the pool when I get back cooling off. Dinner tonight is at the Golden Bosun Tavern & before dinner Mark gives us an interesting & informative talk on the Christmas Island Goshawk. Dinner for us was a fish & prawn parcel with vegetables & mashed potatoes, delicious. We were very tired again tonight, another great day.