Seychelles - Day 1: Mahe and Praslin

I told a lie in my post of yesterday. White-tailed Tropicbird (Phaeton lepturus) was not the first bird I saw in the Seychelles. That was a Zebra Dove (Geopelia striata), also known as a Barred Ground-Dove, an introduced species from South-East Asia, and a LIFER for me. I'd not put it on my target list because it's introduced, but there it was, looking a bit scraggy, to be honest, on the apron of the airport. I thought it would be rude not to count it. Along with Common Mynas (Acridotheres tristis) - a species I hadn't seen since I was in Sydney in the late 1990s - the Zebra Dove is the most noticeable of the birds of the Seychelles. Far more so than any of the native species. That's not a surprise - think House Sparrows (Passer domesticus) in New York or Rose-ringed Parakeets (Psittacula krameri) in Brussels - but it made me wonder if my endemics were going to be as easy as I'd hoped.

Zebra Dove - a poor photo taken later on the visit, and not at the airport, which doesn't have habitat like this, needless to say.

Added to this I was pretty tired by the time I got to Mahe. Even when you're on leave, international politics can intrude on your life. I'd been due in to Victoria at around 0830 after a night flight from Dubai, but after our plane had described four strangely pleasing loops over the Southern Coast of Oman, we had to turn back to Dubai before trying a much longer route out over the Indian Ocean to the Seychelles. The Saudis and their allies had that night started their bombing campaign in Yemen, and our intended flightpath over Socotra, within Yemeni airspace, didn't seem the wisest in those circumstances.

Our cat's-cradle tour of Southern Oman on the first, abortive attempt to reach the Seychelles

I've mentioned it in my previous post, but just to reiterate - the Seychelles are hot, and I had a bit of a wait at the airport before moving onwards. It was rather trying, honestly, sitting their and sweating over my luggage with the mountains of Mahe rising behind me no doubt full of Seychelles White-Eyes (Zosterops modestus) and Blue Pigeons (Alectroenas pulcherrimus). But the airport is pleasant - an airy structure with a plaque proudly stating that it was opened by "THE QUEEN", without further elaboration. Because there is only one, isn't there?

And, inevitably, the birds began to come, starting, as I can now reveal, with that Tropicbird - the first native species I saw. But the big surprise to a birder coming to the Seychelles is that the most noticeable flying creatures aren't birds at all - they're bats; huge Seychelles Fruit Bats (Pteropus seychellensis), to be precise, hanging in the air much like Black Kites (Milvus migrans) would in, say, Kenya.

But there were other birds too. My next LIFER was a Great Frigatebird (Fregata minor), which I'd somehow conflated with Magnificent Frigatebird (Fregata magnificens), a species I've seen before, and therefore, again, neglected to add to my target list.

But where were the endemics? And what was that insistent "kikikikiki" sound? Two small, brightly-coloured birds flew in under the rafters calling loudly to each other: Seychelles Kestrels (Falco araeus). They're really pretty small - probably half the size of their namesakes, and honestly much closer in size and colouration to the African Pygmy-Falcon (Polihierax semitorquatus), in my view. They clearly either nest, or roost, in the rafters here, so if this is the only bird you want to see in the Seychelles, you need go no further than the airport. I didn't take a photo. I was tired, and, besides, if I'd seen them within an hour of arriving, I was bound to see more later, right? Wrong. As it happened these were the only birds of this species I saw while in the Seychelles, though I gather that's pretty rotten luck.

At last the time came for my bus to the ferry, up the North-East coast of Mahe and through the suburbs of Victoria. On the way we flushed a few Cattle Egrets (Bubulcus ibis) of the local seychellarum subspecies, a first, of course. There was a Grey Heron (Ardea cinerea), of all things, in one of the mangrove creeks, and I glimpsed a Seychelles Sunbird (Nectarinia dussumieri) flitting between trees. As we arrived at the port a couple of Madagascar Turtle-Doves (Nesoenas picturatus) pottered around on the grass. Two more LIFERS.

Madagascar Turtle-Dove. This picture taken on Aride, meaning it could be the native subspecies,  N.p. rostratus.

The ferry terminal was crowded, but worth investigating. A couple of Turnstones (Arenaria interpres) on the pier and a winter-plumage Common Tern (Sterna hirundo) bobbing about over the water. The peerless nature writer, Carl Safina, in his unutterably magnificent The View from Lazy Point, uses Turnstones as a leitmotif for his discussion of migration, and its hazards, describing how they pitched-up everywhere on his travels around the world, from Belize to the Arctic, during the year in which the book was set. I'm beginning to think the same. As later days revealed, these Turnstones in Victoria weren't outliers, and I saw groups of twenty or more on Praslin and La Digue, so this is clearly on their migration route despite being 1000km out in the middle of the Indian Ocean. The more I see of migration, the more amazed I am.

Meanwhile a repeated "zreet" drew me to some bushes behind the terminal and a red bird with a black Zorro mask popped out to show off to me: Madagascar Red Fody (Foudia madagascariensis). Yet another LIFER.

The ferry between Mahe and Praslin moves at a fair clip. Around 30 knots, which is around 55kmh. It's not easy holding binoculars steady at this speed, to say nothing of the movement of the sea. And it means that the birds you see need to be viewed quickly before they pass by. But despite this the clear waters held a surprising number of birds, some of which allowed close views, and all of which were LIFERS, bar one species. That species was Wedge-tailed Shearwater (Ardenna pacificus), which I'd seen before in the Gulf of Aden (it's a long story), but the others were all new: Bridled Tern (Onychoprion anaethetus), Lesser Noddy (Anous tenuirostris) and Fairy Tern (Gygis alba). In an act of unspeakable literary vandalism, Birdlife International have now renamed that last species as "Common White Tern", which is about the least poetic description imaginable for this faultless porcelain figurine of a bird and which I point-blank refuse to use. And note the weasel-word "Common". Common where? In Belgium?

A Bridled Tern

My spirits were lifted from this grave reflection by the site of a pod of Dolphins - Indo-Pacific Bottlenose Dolphins (Tursiops aduncus), I was later told, breaching gently and showing some subtle spotting on the flanks. Wonderful.

By the time I reached Praslin I'd been on the road, with only about an hour's sleep, for 28 hours and was pretty much exhausted. My welcoming hotel did their best to take me through the features of my standard hotel room in painstaking detail, but I eventually managed to persuade them that all I wanted was to shower, get changed, have a beer, write up my notes, eat, and sleep - in that order. And that's what I did, rounding off a day that had produced 10 LIFERS on the bird side and two on the mammal side. A good start.

Clearly time to write up my notes and go to bed.

Paradise - Seychelles

You know those photos you see promoting tourism to the Seychelles? The perfect white coral sand beach? The azure and turquoise ocean beyond? The swaying coconut palms on the coast, and the verdant forest rising behind? The weirdly-weathered granite boulders strewn willy-nilly from seashore to mountain top? Well, let me tell you something. They're accurate. It really is like that.

See what I mean? The beach at Grand 'Anse on Praslin

The islands are almost preternaturally paradisiacal. The plants are thornless. Invertebrate life seems harmless. The sea is just the right side of warm to be refreshing. There are dogs, but they don't chase and don't bark. The driving is good. There is barely any litter. Food consists of varieties of curried fish. Perfection, it would seem.

It's bollocks, of course. The Seychelles have problems like everyone else. They're increasing in significance as a transshipment point for heroin. There's lots of dodgy money sloshing about. Crime is a problem on the main island, Mahé. But to the casual visitor, none of this is apparent. What you notice is the following. The islands are beautiful. They're a very long way from anywhere else. And it's hot.

The fact that the islands are beautiful is, alas, largely irrelevant to the birder, though it makes for a nice background to writing up your notes in the evening. But the other two points have important knock-on consequences for us. On the "far, far away" point, isolation equals endemism. The inner "granitic" islands of the Seychelles have twelve land bird species that are found nowhere else. There used to be fourteen, but two are extinct. There are also several endemic subspecies. It's also worth noting that unlike any islands of equivalent isolation, the Seychelles are continental in nature, being the last remnant of a drowned land that broke off from Africa at about the same time that Madagascar did. Still, oceanic isolation, whatever its origin, also means seabirds, and plenty of them. Millions breed on the islands of the Seychelles every year, including a good proportion on the "inners".

Birds over Booby Island, near Aride. The name seems a clue, but there are no Boobies on this Island.

But from a human perspective, isolation means something else; expense. Everything here is expensive - it goes without saying that importing things to a place as out of the way as this doesn't come cheap, so the baseline is bound to be quite high. But the consequence is that even if you take a self-catering apartment and never eat out, this will still not be a budget visit.

And then there's the heat. I can't exaggerate this. As I've said in previous posts I've birded in Equatorial East Africa, in Australia, in the Sahel and in the Amazon, but the heat here is as exhausting as anything I've experienced before. It's not that high - the low 30s celsius - but the humidity is intense. So here's a warning. You can bird here every day, but not all day. I managed about 2 or a maximum of 3 hours per half day. Much more than that and you're starting to run the risk of sunstroke. No joke. Lots of water. Coke at least once a day, and don't neglect the salt requirement when you eat.

To what I suspect will be my lasting wonderment, I had to go to the Seychelles for work. A conference, which started on the Monday and ended on the Wednesday before Easter. This was, I presumed then, and presume now, my only chance ever to visit the Seychelles, so I was determined to add a couple of days to these three to try and see at least most of the endemics. I had intended only the weekend - Saturday and Sunday - but it transpires that two of the most important birding locations (Aride and Cousin Islands) are only open on weekdays, which meant I had to come out on the Thursday in order to visit at least one of them on the Friday. Poor me, as I'm sure you're thinking.

Another bloody perfect day in paradise. This taken on Aride, but it could have been any of the islands.

Having said this, I'm convinced that two days is enough to cover all the islands except Mahé and I would have been happy with only that time. But bear in mind that visits to some of the outlying islands are dependent on the sea-state, so it's as well to have a flexible programme to allow for this, if possible. 

Next tip: buy Skelton and Disley's Birds of Seychelles. It may seem an extravagance for a visit of a few days, and with a limited number of species to see, but it contains invaluable advice on places to visit. And, more to the point, if we don't buy these books, people will stop writing and publishing them.

Final advice. If you want to have a chance of seeing all the endemics, you must visit at least four of the following islands: Mahé, Praslin (pronouned Prah-lin, as opposed to Praz-lin, as I discovered just in time), La Digue, Cousin, Cousine, Aride and Denis. Of these the first three are large islands with regular ferries. The last mentioned are usually visited by appointment, and sometimes are tricky even then (like Cousine which is an inconceivably luxurious resort but compensates for this by maintaining a small research and conservation programme, meaning it allows visits from birders, but  only if its not full of actual, paying guests).

I chose to base myself on Praslin for the days before the conference, and it was a good decision. On its own it has one species that no other island has - the Seychelles Parrot (Coracopsis barklyi) - and it's a good base for an easy visits to La Digue and either Cousin or Aride, or both. I had time for only one of those last two, and chose Aride, because it has more species, including more seabirds. It also, generally, has fewer people and you get to stay for longer. Good choice, as it turned out.

Once you get the hang of things its easy to use local buses or walk, rather than take the expensive taxis, though it's worth finding a driver you trust, just in case. On La Digue there are virtually no cars, so it's all by bike or foot. And on Aride, its shanks' pony only. But don't ignore my earlier comments on the heat. These are not leisurely strolls.

A distant view of Aride, with Booby Island in the foreground. Beautiful, but try walking up to the summit at midday.

So, how did it measure up? Well, I of course hoped to see all twelve endemics. In addition I had high hopes for around eight species of seabird that I'd not seen before. So, let's make the target species total 20. Well, without giving too much away now (I'll give a blow-by-blow account over the coming days) the outcome, in the end, was as follows: I saw 38 species, 35 of which were year ticks, and 22 of which were LIFERS. There's overlap in these figures, of course. But as to my target list: well, I got 10 of the available 12 endemics, and 6 of the seabirds I'd hoped to see. This is, far and away, the highest proportion of target species I've ever seen, anywhere in the world, and as you'll have noticed there were a couple of species that I saw that I hadn't included on my target list, or hadn't expected to see. The islands were, I found, surprisingly surprising.

So was it all worth it? Answer, in short, yes.

At last, a recognisable bird. This was, in fact, the first species I saw on the Seychelles: A White-tailed Tropicbird (Phaethon lepturus), and it's every bit as stunning as the islands themselves.