Family, friends, birds and music…
Avid readers of this blog (are there any?) will know that throughout my birding career I have tried to find family holiday destinations where I can indulge birding without getting into to trouble by eating into family time. Note that birding trips are not holidays (as SMR Young so eloquently put it, as we trudged up a steep, slippery trail in West Papua in the rain and mud, “let no man call this a bloody holiday”). Very few places fit the combination bill, and my most successful tactic has been to wait until one of the girls suggests a place, so it’s clear it is their idea; I could not possibly have another agenda, could I?!?
One place I have had half an eye on, ever since reading Sean Dooley’s “The Big Twitch (his account of breaking the Australian Big Year record in 2002), is Lord Howe Island. In 2023 my good friends Mike and Dani Potter went there and Mike’s report not only gripped me off with the excellent birding, but confirmed that this was potentially the ideal couples+birding destination. It’s an isolated, crescent shaped volcanic rock about 800km north east of Sydney, a place of outstanding beauty with quiet beaches, spectacular cliffs, the most southerly extensive coral reefs in Australia, and home to thousands of seabirds and some unique flora.
It was uninhabited by humans until Europeans found it accidentally, in 1788, as a party sailed to Norfolk Island (a further 800km in the same rough direction) with orders to establish a penal colony. They carried on to Norfolk Island to fulfil their orders, but on the return journey planted the Union Jack and “claimed” LHI for King and country, as they tended to do in those days. A small human population has resided there since. Tourism took off after WWII, but it remains an exclusive destination, expensive and with limited flights — no riff-raff, you understand — and only 400 tourists allowed on the island at any one time, so they never outnumber locals. Apart from the young travelling workers who clean accommodation and serve in the restaurants, I had the impression that Nikki and I were in the lower age demographic. But maybe this is just my refusal to acknowledge that I am now the same age as old people.
Pre-settlement, Lord Howe Island was home to 9 species of bird that have since become extinct, mainly the victims of habitat changes and introduced predators, especially rats and mice. A tenth species, the Lord Howe Woodhen, a flightless rail, clung on, reduced in the 1980s to about 15 pairs in the remotest part of the island on Mt Gower. But since then, eradication of the introduced species, most notably and recently, a controversial, but ultimately stunningly successful attempt to rid the island of rats by baiting (2019-2021), has led to an astonishing recovery of the Woodhen population. The 2023 census estimated more than 2000 now on the island.
I was of course attracted to the birds; not just the Woodhen but the huge numbers of seabirds that breed on Lord Howe and the adjacent Balls Pyramid: 5 potential lifers, 2 potential Australian ticks, and a chance of great views of of a bird I had first ticked off 30 years ago. The attraction for Nikki, on the other hand, was the idea of an empty-nester sub-tropical holiday: lazing on beaches, long walks along the coast, and cocktails at sunset. With 5 days, we could do all of the above!
A week prior, I arrived in Sydney, meeting up with Nikki for the first time since the summer in Oxford. Over the next two days I delivered a couple of work talks at UNSW and UTS, then spent the next fabulous week with Nikki, Eri and Lou, celebrating Louisa’s 21st. Particularly special was the fact that old friends Luis and Charlotte had flown in from UK for the party. We all enjoyed a few days in Bondi, chilling, chatting, walking/running to the beach, eating too much great food, drinking too much great wine, and even squeezing in a wee bit of sightseeing and culture.
Lou, Nikki and I also managed a Coldplay gig on Wednesday.
On Friday, Nikki and I headed north with Luis and Charlotte for a spot of wine tasting in the Hunter Valley, and some 90s nostalgia with Take That and Sophie Ellis-Bextor at A Day on the Green.
Just as it seemed we had settled into a totally chilled routine, Luis and Charlotte had to head home to Blighty. Fortunately Nikki and I still had our cheeky, empty-nester trip to come, so as L&C were winging their way home over India or the Middle East somewhere, N&I were boarding a cute Qantas-link Dash-8 turboprop for the 2 hour journey to Lord Howe Island.
The trip itself was not too bumpy, but on arrival LHI did not shape up to be the sun-kissed tropical place we had dreamed about. It was a cloudy day, threatening rain, and the forecast was unfortunately for more of the same for the whole 5 days we were due to be here. Oh dear! And already my trip to Balls Pyramid for tomorrow would not go ahead because of high winds and big seas.
That first afternoon Nikki was not feeling too well and just wanted to rest. While she dozed in our beautiful self-contained holiday cottage, I used a break in the weather to walk up to Malabar, the cliffs at the NW corner of the island. Thirty years earlier, on my first ever trip to Australia with Nikki, then new girlfriend, I had dragged her unwillingly off the stunning, deserted milelong beach that is Bunker Bay in SW Western Australia to get to Sugarloaf Rock where there was a small population of Red-tailed Tropicbirds, the southern-most location in the world for this beautiful tropical species. That day, as Nikki waited grudgingly in the car, I had a distant view of a single bird returning to the island. Through my inadequate bins I could make out that one of the white birds in the distance had a long thin tail streamer, meaning it was not one of the many gulls or terns. Unequivocal, tickable, but hardly ideal for such a stunning seabird. Today, however, standing at the top of the 100m cliffs with amazing 360 views, I was alone with the seabirds flying below me and a wheeling above my head, including amazing views and photographs of several Red-tailed Tropicbirds.
Fortunately for us, the forecast proved to be overly pessimistic, and over the next few days we were able to settle into a routine of a walk or cycle for a coffee in the morning, lazy lunch, beach, cocktails and dinner, interspersed with some snorkeling and kayaking.
Lord Howe Woodhens and Buff-banded Rails and dotted the paths in and around the settlement. Hundreds of Black Noddies were constantly coming and going building their nests around the shops, along with smaller numbers of White Terns, perhaps the prettiest, cutest seabird of all (and an Australian tick for me). We could enjoy the spectacle sitting on the deck of The Crooked Post bar. Even Nikki enjoys birding if she can do it with a glass of Prosecco in hand. Walking home after dinner the night air rang out with the calls of Flesh-footed Shearwaters, and we even came across one in the middle of the road, waddling towards its burrow having landed in slightly the wrong spot.
A particular favourite was Ned’s Beach, just a 10 minute walk or 3 minute cycle from our accommodation. The white sand slopes down to clear water above a rich coral reef. Snorkeling gear is available from a beach hut, via an honour box for just 5 bucks for the day. I could swim out and see a rich diversity of fish and coral below the water, while enjoying Sooty Terns — which breed in their hundreds on the beach — Brown Noddies, and White Terns wheeling above me. Best of all, here were at least 2-3 pairs of lifer Black-winged Petrel swooping from the bay up to the trees and low cliffs above the beach scoping out potential nesting sites.
Luckily for me, as the weather and seas calmed, the cancelled trip to Balls was rescheduled. Jack Shick is a third generation islander who runs walking, fishing and birding trips. The hike he had booked in for Thursday up Mt Gower was deemed too dangerous because the steep paths were still slippery from the rain, meaning he now had an opening to take me and the other disappointed punters from Tuesday out on his boat around the island and over to Balls Pyramid. Thursday morning I boarded Jack’s vessel with about 8 other punters — all non-birders — and we cruised around the northern section of of LHI under the impressive Malabar Cliffs (where I’d birded on day 1), then over to Balls Pyramid. Named after Henry Lidgbird Ball, who led the expedition that discovered Lord Howe and Balls Pyramid en route to Norfolk Island, this volcanic stack – the highest in the world — rises 600m like a blade from the ocean about 20km SE of LHI. As well as wanting to enjoy the scenery and sheer numbers of birds from a boat, I had three specific targets: Grey Ternlet, White-bellied Storm-petrel and Providence Petrel.
Although I was the only birder on the cruise, Jack was aware of my targets and helped me connect with all of them. We saw a few Grey Ternlets below the Malabar Cliffs, but then near Balls Pyramid itself there were rafts of hundreds of feeding birds. Halfway between LHI and Balls I picked up a White-bellied Strom-petrel, then a few more, then we discovered a raft of about 50, one of the largest gatherings even Jack himself has seen. Although Providence Petrels breed on Lord Howe Island, by November most of the adults have headed to the north Pacific for the summer, leaving the juveniles to fend for themselves. Even most of those had departed but fortunately we picked up a couple of stragglers to complete my set of targets. Other good birds noted on the trip included several Kermadec Petrel, Masked Booby, Flesh-footed Shearwater and Red-tailed Tropicbird.
Our last full day we carried on with our routine of coffee, then a cruise and snorkel looking for turtles, lunch, beach, and finished off with fish and chips down by the jetty from Benny’s Fish Truck. A couple of Woodhen’s pecked their way unconcerned around us, then some excitement down on the jetty where some kids had found something. A “Ninja Turtle??” Must be a funny game they’re playing. Ah, no, it’s an “injured turtle”. The vet was called and the poor thing was loaded into her ute with puncture marks from a shark dotting its shell.
The final day, Saturday, was our transfer back to Sydney followed immediately by a flight to Adelaide. Luckily Qantas was able to check our baggage straight through and we arrived in Adelaide just in time to stroll down to the Adelaide 500 where Crowded House and Cold Chisel were playing post-race gigs, rounding out our week of 80s, 90s and 00s music nostalgia.
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