The Wildlife is still Wonderful

Even after being here since Dec ‘07, over 16 months now, the wildlife still amazes me. I still firmly believe that there can’t be many places on earth as rich in wildlife as here on Aride, it truly is alive. It carries on in its own world, regardless of what we are doing, electricity or not, the sooty terns still circle nosily above the hill as they come into breed and the magpie robins still sing their beautiful song after a shower of rain.

Even after all this time, I am in awe that I live in such a place, where turtles make their way up the beach during the day and where thousands of seabirds will soon be congregating to breed. Everywhere you look there is movement, whether it is the scurrying of skinks or the fluttering of fairy terns, from dawn to dusk and through the night the wildlife does its stuff.

Every so often this hits home and today as I showed a group of the local school children round, it reminded me what a special place Aride is. We are just so spoilt, the young people were able to stand no more than a metre from white tailed tropic birds, fairy terns, clear the ground for magpie robins to feed in front of them and watch geckos protect their eggs on our spectacular Banyan tree. Aride inspires many people, adults and children alike and I still feel privileged that part of my job is to facilitate this, to open up this wonderful island for visitors, to let them too enjoy the wealth of wildlife it supports.

Wildlife is great, and that phrase the RSPB use ‘Aren’t Birds Brilliant’, yes they are, we have tropic birds that think they are magpie robins,

fluffy fairy terns that are so tiny I never know how they manage to hang on to the most knobbly branches,

Audubon shearwater chicks snuggled in their burrows on the side of the path

and then there are hermit crabs that are so orange they look like they’ve been painted.

There are eagle rays the size of blankets surfing the waves and fish so colourful they look like they belong in an aquarium.

As I sit and write this, the sooty terns are here in their thousands, as they begin to come in to nest, they look like a swarm of mosquitoes as they circle above the hill chattering to each other, a family of Seychelles warblers feed in the vegetation by the side of me,

and sunbirds flit backwards and forwards through the veranda, the brown noddys croak like crows in the Casuerina tree whilst the sea roars in the back ground, and there is the shrill sound of our youngest magpie robin alarm calling as it gets dark. The crabs start to collect around my feet as they seek to scavenge on any scraps that we may have thrown out through the day and it will be shortly be time for the shearwaters to start hurtling past as they make their way out to sea and of course our friendly gecko will soon be on the alert just in case there is chocolate cake on the menu tonight.