CHRISTMAS ISLAND: MY TENTH VISIT

Qantas-Link somehow managed to transport us all with our luggage from Cocos to Christmas Island without losing anything. Unfortunately, from my point of view, Christmas Island proved to be most disappointing. We did all our usual things: we admired the Golden Bosunbirds, we tried to identify each and every frigatebird and we wondered at the prehistoric Abbott's Booby. Everyone easily saw the Christmas Boobook, but alas! I do not believe that there were any Northern Boobooks on the island. We all saw plenty of Island Thrushes, White-eyes and Swiftlets, and everyone saw Java Sparrows and Christmas Goshawks at least once. It was extremely dry and there were virtually no migrants at all. We did see a few Barn Swallows, but they were swooping quite high, and if it had been a lifer, I'd have liked a better look. A couple of Arctic Warblers were reported before we arrived, someone saw a von Schrenk's Bittern and there was talk of a Yellow Bittern, but that was it. At Margaret Knoll, we watched a Peregrine Falcon (race ernesti) being hassled by, and in turn hassling, a frigatebird. I thought it was good to see the frigatebird get some of its own medicine for once. Richard told us he'd only ever seen Peregrines take Christmas Imperial Pigeons. He'd no sooner finished his statement, than some of us witnessed the Peregrine doing just that: killing a pigeon in mid-air. One thing we did which I hadn't done before, was to go on a pelagic. Sadly, it was predictable tropical seabirding. We saw nothing noteworthy. Sharp-eyed Sue (who was responsible for finding most of last year's vagrants on Cocos) saw this:

There are cat traps all over the island, but this is the first time I've ever seen anything caught in one. The National Parks staff remain confident that they will eventually eliminate feral cats, but it is unfortunate that the Malay population thinks it is their right to own a pet. While it is illegal to own an unspayed cat on Christmas Island, there's no doubt that some still exist. In fact, the most interesting creatures on this leg of our trip were not birds. A couple of our group saw an exciting, as yet unidentified bat, and when we dined at Lucky Ho's, we enjoyed a fruit-piercing moth sucking up mango juice off the table cloth.

I can only hope that my eleventh trip to Christmas Island will be more productive. I must see that Northern Boobook one day!