One Tree and Brushwood Islets, Suwarrow

September 20, 2009
Excursion to the NW corner of the atoll; The birds on One Tree Islet: Terns, Boobies, Frigates, Tropic Birds; Onwards walking to the Brushwoods; Ready to start back; Time for lunch; Snorkeling over live reefs; It is time to return to Anchorage Islet.

Excursion to the NW corner of the atoll

This is John calling from Suwarrow base. If you want to join us on a trip to One Tree and Brushwood islets, meet us at the wharf at 12:30 and bring a lunch.

I made macaroni and cheese with peas, curried egg salad, and baked some corn bread spread with honey. We arrived promptly at the wharf at 12:30. I get in the Tinny (tin dinghy) with John and his family for photo ops. Steve and Nicky, off SV Seren, get in the Tinny too along with Jacob. Chris the Canadian crew, on Australian SV Biscayne Bay, goes with Russ in Zulu’s dinghy. Dee, off of SV Seren, rides in Bill and Linda’s dinghy, off SV Valiam.

The “boys” are perched on the bow looking out to the azure waters: Tine, Jona, and Vanni. Biscayne Bay is at anchor with Garry and Lisa resting. We are ready to go. Outward bound, motor full bore, wind in our hair, smiles on our faces we make for the NW corner of the atoll. It will take about an hour.


The “boys” are perched on the bow looking out to the azure waters: Tine, Jona, and Vanni. Biscayne Bay is at anchor in the far right corner.


Vanni is in a contemplative mood on the bow of the Tinny, patiently waiting to take off.


Full speed ahead to One Tree and Brushwood Islets on the NW corner of the atoll.


We motor inside the lagoon with the reefs and breakers beyond.


A close up of photogenic Nicky from New Zealand off the SV Seren.


John at the helm of the Tinny watching for coral heads as we approach shallow water.


The excursion party arrives and we all disembark on the coral reef.

The birds of One Tree Islet

As usual the waters go from royal blue to aquamarine to clear as it becomes more and more shallow, and gently laps up on the coral beaches. After an hour or so, the party arrives and disembarks on shore. It is imperative we wear Tevas or jelly sandals. Otherwise the sharp coral would cut into tender feet.

One Tree Islet is a misnomer. There is more than one tree. However scrawny and windblown and low lying they are. It is HOT. In the shade of the trees little Tine and Vanni tread lightly and quietly, like they are walking on clouds. They point to the nesting birds and to the chicks. I never would have seen them they were so camouflaged. There were eggs, whole and cracked, open in the vicinity: life taking form.


A young Tern? finds shade.


Fluffy newborn venturing out from the shade onto the coral.


An egg uncracked: life taking form.

I quote (excuse the punctuation) from Tony Sofer’s Oceans of Birds on: White and Fairy Terns; Great Frigates; Brown, Masked, and Red footed Boobies; and Red-Tailed Tropicbirds. These are some of the birds we came across in Suwarrow.

Terns


Perfection of a White or Fairy Tern is cut out in bluest of blue skies.

“There are over forty species of tern, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Most are birds of the coast, some are oceanic. They are smaller, more graceful and more streamlined than the gulls which they superficially resemble, but they have narrower, more pointed wings and slender, sharp-pointed bills. Many have deeply forked tails, earning them the sailor’s name of sea-swallow. They are short in the legs with small webbed feet buoyant on the sea yet rarely in it, for they swim poorly. They often enjoy a rest on a piece of driftwood or raft of seaweed.

They tend to have white bodies with gray backs and wings, very often a black cap and sometimes a jaunty crest. Their bills and feet range in colour from black to blood-red or yellow. Exceptionally aerial, they roost at night but are in the air for most of the day outside the breeding season. They can live for long periods on the wing. They fly with steady, purposeful wing-beats, never soaring, tending to look down, their beaks pointing to the water. In searching for fish they may hover, then plunge head first for small fish at the surface—splash, snatch and up again.

They will normally have paired before they reach the nesting quarters but courting continues with highly ritualized displays which include ceremonial feeding. Typically, terns nest in close-packed colonies, some of them very populous indeed. The stimulus and noise of company leads them to synchronize their egg-laying, with resulting advantages in terms of safety—the safety of numbers which confuses predators. Even so, there is high mortality, which accounts for the average clutch of three or four eggs in many species as against the single egg of, for instance, the Sooty Tern, which suffers less from predation.

The nest is often little more than a shallow depression, a hollow on a sandy or shingle beach, usually on an island. The chicks are fed on whole small fish, such as sand-eels, which may be longer than the chick itself, so that while the head end is being digested the tail hangs out for all to see.

Breeding success is heavily dependent on the supply of suitable fish and sometimes a particularly high tide will create havoc.

Predators like rats, skuas, gulls, crows and owls take a heavy toll. The chicks are heavily dependent on their parents until long after they have fledged, but if they are lucky they may live to the ripe old age of thirty.”

Frigate Birds

Pacific Ocean: Great (Frigate Birds)


See the forked tail and huge wing span of the buccaneer and supreme aerial sea bird.

“Their name derives from their nature as buccaneers of the sky, just as the handy eighteenth-century frigates were a match for any vessel they might meet at sea, so sailors named them in recognition of their prowess: the alternative ‘Man-o-War’ bird is simply a variation on the theme. Frigatebirds live up to their reputation with spectacular maneuvers in aerial pursuit and piracy, stalling and turning with total control in a way which outclasses any competition. Supremely aerial seabirds, they can hang seemingly motionless in the sky for hours, waiting to pounce. The air is their daytime medium, they alight on the water only at their peril, for they have small oil glands and their plumage is not water-proof. If they find themselves in the water by mistake they need to get airborne instantly. They are equally at a disadvantage on dry land, for their legs are short and hopelessly inadequate for walking. They must shuffle and climb to a point from which they can take off.

By night they roost on a tree or bush which offers a convenient launch-pad when the sunrise brings a thermal lift. They have huge wings, up to 7ft in span, a deeply forked tail which is the key to their aerobatics and a piratically hooked bill. With their shapely wings they float effortlessly in dynamic soaring flight, plunging only to retrieve food items from the surface or to snatch a flying fish. Sometimes they chase other seabirds to relieve them of their unattended egg or chick or a newly hatched turtle making its way to the sea.

Frigatebirds breed colonially on tropical islands, often in close company with terns, boobies, cormorants or pelicans whose breeding efforts provide a convenient food source. Uniquely among seabirds, there are striking differences in plumage colour between the sexes., the males being mostly dark while the females have some white on the underparts. In the breeding season there is an even more spectacular difference, for a bare patch of skin on the male’s throat inflates to become a scarlet balloon in courtship display, when it also serves as a sound box for the rattling and yodeling love-calls.

The nest is a bulky structure of twigs in trees or bushes which has to be carefully guarded because frigatebirds are thieves by nature, and will steal building materials as freely as they will take their neighbour’s eggs or chicks. The single chick is tended by its parents till long after it has fledged, maybe as much as a year. The young birds are easily recognized by their white heads. They are said to be easily tamed and used by Polynesians as homers, carrying messages between islands. On leaving their parents they disperse widely, but as adults they tend to be sedentary, which accounts for the isolated populations on remote islands.”

Boobies

Pantropical: Masked, Red-footed, and Brown


A Marked Booby: ‘double-breasted’, with a network of air sacs under the skin which cushions the impact of their plunge into the waters and makes them buoyant in the sea.

“The name is derived from the Spanish ‘Bobo’ for a clown with the implication of a certain stupidity, assumed from their clumsiness on land, and their reluctance to appreciate the danger of a man’s approach. In the past their colonies have been sadly reduced by constant exploitation for eggs, fat chicks for food supply or simply by clubbing for fishing bait. Their habit of roosting on a convenient ship has provided many a seabird dinner for hungry mariners.

Boobies, like the gannets of the same family, are the size of geese, cigar shaped with long pointed wings, stout conical beaks, long necks and long wedge tails. Their short legs have warm webbed feet which serve to incubate eggs, since boobies and gannets have no brood patch in their plumage.

They are sociable birds, both ashore and at sea. And while the gannets inhabit more temperate regions, boobies are blue-water birds with a tropical and subtropical distribution. Brown, Masked, and Red-footed Boobies share the same range, practically girdling the tropical world, the others are more restricted.

Brown Boobies are the commonest in the sense of most often seen in the widest geographical area. But beware the confusing truth that all immature boobies are more or less brown: the adult Brown Booby is dark brown all over except for a sharply contrasting white belly.

As gannets, boobies feed by plunge-diving and underwater pursuit of pelagic fish. They range far out to sea on fishing trips, covering a vast area of the impoverished tropical seas in search of the elusive flying fish. Unlike the closely related cormorants they have waterproof plumage and can roost on the sea’s surface, but they normally roost ashore (or sometimes on a convenient ship). They are confirmed ship-visitors not haunting the wake as storm-petrels or albatrosses but staying ‘up-front’, criss-crossing the bow-wave to chase flying fish which take flight to escape the presumed danger of the advancing monster only to face a worse one in the air.

The booby plunge-dives are not so spectacularly vertical as those of the gannets, they tend to be more slanted. But they often involve an exciting wave-top chase when, more often than not, the fish finds safety back in the sea again. Like gannets, boobies are ‘double-breasted', with a network of air sacs under the skin which cushions the impact of the plunge and also makes them buoyant in the sea.

Fortunately for them, in view of their touching innocence of man, they choose to breed on the remotest islands and inaccessible cliffs. They adopt a wide range of habitats, from open flat ground to cliff slopes, ledges, trees and bushes.

Brown boobies, though laying two eggs, rear only one because the first chick to hatch promptly reduces competition for food by killing its sibling soon after it arrives. Pantropic boobies fish less productive waters and have difficulty in raising one chick, never mind two, and take longer to fatten them to dispersal age.

As in so many seabirds, the young, when independent, travel great distances, but as adults they remain within a few hundred miles of their breeding-place where they fight jealously to guard their nest patch.”

Tropic Birds

Pacific Ocean: Red-Tailed

I missed capturing the Tropic bird that circled curiously close above our heads on the reefs, so have no picture but only a memory of its magnificent bright red marline-spike tail feather.

“Tropic birds range the high seas as supremely aerial birds with a rather pigeon-like flight, quick, strong wing-beats. They tend to be seen high above the water, and though they are not serious ship-followers, they will pay a short visit to inspect the vessel and greet it with a shrill, trilling whistle.

Sailors have always called them bosun birds, partly because of the extraordinarily long central tail feathers, which form a ‘marline-spike’, but also because of that shrill call which resembles the call of a bosun’s whistle.

They are well named, as birds almost exclusively confined to the tropics. Truly pelagic, they will be seen many hundreds of miles from land hunting the trackless wastes where fish are not easy to find. For this reason they tend to be solitary at sea.

They have straight, heavy beaks and short legs, being hardly able to walk ashore.

The wedge tails have two central tail feathers which are elongated only in the adults. The mainly white plumage has a pattern of black bars.

Red-Tailed Tropicbirds have a silky-white plumage tinged rosy, a black crescent over the eye with the black wing bar, and the tail feathers are bright red. They inhabit the tropical Indian and Pacific oceans but not the Atlantic.

Tropicbirds plunge-dive heavily, in gannet style, from 50ft or more, mainly for fish and squids and especially at dusk and night, when squid tend to rise to the surface. After diving they may sit high on the water with their tails cocked up out of the wet. Though they tend to be solitary at sea, tropicbirds can be gregarious in courtship and at the breeding site. Rocky, remote islands are the chosen habitat for breeding, the single egg is laid without the benefit of a nest on bare rock in a crevice or cave or under a bush. At the nest they are indifferent to man’s approach, though they will squawk and peck. The natives of Polynesia have long prized their tail plumes for ornamentation, and while the loss of these feathers may affect their dignity it fortunately does not inconvenience them in performance.”

Onwards walking to the Brushwoods

I hang the picnic cooler in a tree and start walking to the Brushwoods Islet, across the low-tide reefs, and pools of water. Birds are everywhere! The sky is alive with them: Terns; Frigate birds with white puffy chests against black feathers, forked tails, and hooked beaks; and Boobies of various variety. There are flocks and flocks of them and I aim my camera to the skies and can’t shoot fast enough.


Birds are everywhere filling the skies: Terns Frigatebirds, Boobies.


Start counting: one, two, three….


…four, five, six seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven.


….. to fourteen.


A sky full of birds. Ever upwards I look.

The waves pound on the reefs. I photograph the skyline of Russ walking toward the Brushwoods, a scrubby tree trying to grow out of an exposed coral head; the shell of a lobster; clam shell; blues in the submerged reefs. I lie in the shallow waters to cool off. We take photographs of each other and the sea.


I photograph Russ walking on Brushwood Islet.


The beginning of a scrubby tree tenaciously grows out of a dead coral head.


The blue of an empty lobster shell contrasts with the rocks and reef.


I set up a shell picture with crushed coral beach as background.


Blues in the submerged reef.


The reefs resemble a moonscape at low tide--barren. Outside the waves of the blue Pacific Ocean crash on the reef line.


My breaking wave picture.


Marilyn as close as she can be to the sea she loves so.


John and his three sweet sons: Tine, Jona, and Vanni. What beautiful people and what a life they lead.


Russ with his cut-off Body (US skier) shirt on.


Steve, Bill, Chris, Deonie, and Nicky rest awhile, before returning to One Tree Islet.


Russ, John, and Jona walk on just a little bit further in search of giant coconut crabs, which they do find.

Ready to start back

We are ready to start back. The excursion includes picking up plastics and other rubbish that has washed ashore: a toilet seat, a rubber car fender, a plastic shopping bag, water bottles, buoys. We pick up what we can on the return trip to the shady trees.


The group heads back to One Tree Islet picking up all kinds of sundry flotsam and jetsam the oceans have carried to Suwarrow.


See the weary adventurers are mere dots on the horizon as they make their return to One Tree Islet.

I linger awhile until our party of advernturers are mere dots on the horizon before I retrace my steps in silence. I think of the couple 30 years ago, who were inexperienced sailors on a catamaran. They would radio a buddy monohull boat for their position and then guestimate where they were. Well a catamaran goes faster than a monohull and to add to the risk they both slept through the night without standing watch.

Early one morning they awoke to a crash and water coming through the hulls up to the bunks they had been sleeping in. They were shipwrecked here on one of the reefs in Suwarrow. Luck would have it that they lived to tell the story.

Time for lunch

I give Veronica half the macaroni and cheese, and the egg salad and crackers. Besides fish, coconuts, and breadfruit, the Cook Island wardens do not have a variety of food, so the yachties share what they can with them and John and Veronica, in turn share the fish they catch. Chris, the Canadian crew on Biscayne Bay is looking like a puppy, who lost his tail, so he gets some of the rest of the macaroni and cheese.

I lie down in the shade, close to the nesting bird and the chicks and fall into a deep, deep sleep. Am I shipwrecked on the reefs of Suwarrow? Is the water lapping at the top of my bunk? I awake to Veronica saying they are leaving to go snorkeling.

Snorkeling in amongst the live and colourful reefs

Into the Tinny I get and off we all go to a beautiful spot John knows of. And into the water we plunge and oh what a wonderland of colour and fish. I have not seen anything like it in 30 years, when last we were in the South Seas. Electric blue schools of fish with yellow beaks are my favourite, as well as the giant clams with vibrant purple, turquoise, and orange lips.

John’s boys jump on and off the Tinny. The whole family is having the time of their lives, as are the yachties. John and his boys only have masks. No snorkels or fins. They are like fish and their lung capacity is enormous. Just when I think John has stayed down so long he will soon pass out, he grabs onto a coral head and stays down even longer. Then without any urgency, slowly surfaces. Absolutely amazing!


Vanni, Tine, Jona, and Veronica are in their element in warm waters blue.


A big smile of satisfaction from Jona. How much better can this get?


A family at play in a national park paradise.

It is time to return to Anchorage Islet

We all pile into the Tinny and various dinghies and take off. John waits for Russ and Bill to go ahead as he trawls a line. Veronica pulls the line off the reel and just holds it with her hands. There are no bites for dinner tonight.

John talks about how the Chinese have their sights on fishing rights in Suwarrow. He is almost talking to himself. After such a magnificent day, he wants to hold on to the magic of this atoll and not let go.


After our magnificent day, John talks of how the Chinese have their sights on fishing rights in Suwarrow.

“Yes, they are thinking of ways to make money here at Suwarrow.” John says.

“The Chinese built us a court house and a police station in Roratonga, which is falling down already. They say, you don’t have to pay us now.”

“They are aiming at getting the fishing rights of these waters. That would not be good.” He says.

“Another thought is to get a pearl farm established here. That would not be good either.”

We savour the moments in silence as we near our anchorage. A light rain falls. The sun comes out again, and a perfect rainbow arcs Anchorage islet: a perfect image to the end of a perfect day. Then to re-emphasize the beauty of the day, a double rainbow appears.


A light rain falls and our excursion lead by John and Veronica ends at the end of the rainbow.


Then to re-emphasize the beauty of the day, a double rainbow appears.


Anchorage Islet is safe under the arc of the rainbow. May it be their guardian.

John and his family roar off to the pass to catch fish for their dinner. They have been successful and buzz our boat on their return. The sun has all but set and we see the family of six in the Tinny, almost silhouetted. Jeremiah stands up holding the two Tuna they have caught: a huge smile on his face-- huge smiles on all their faces. The fish in Suwarrow is still theirs for now. May rainbows be their guardians.


Jeremiah holds up the two Tuna they caught, a huge smile on his face. The fish in Suwarrow is still theirs for now.