A Brit abroad

Welcome to Surprise Island

Surprise Island is a small (700x400m) oval island emerging from an atoll lined with coral reefs, about 230km north of the northern tip of New Caledonia (and a long way from anywhere else).

We set up camp on the sandy shore.

The beach is home to many crabs, wintering shorebirds from the northern hemisphere, and at night, egg-laying Green Turtles.

I had a noisy neighbour - this young Masked Booby honked indignantly every time I left the tent (mercifully, after a few days he learned to ignore me).

The interior of the island is covered with vegetation - a dense forest of Pisonia favoured by nesting Red-footed Boobies, and intermediate height shrubs used by Great and Lesser Frigatebirds. There is an interior plane used by nesting Brown and Masked Boobies and roosting Pacific Golden Plovers. Parts of the plane are riddled with Wedge-tailed Shearwater burrows. Red-tailed Tropicbird is a scarce nester. This year we didn't find any nests, although a calling pair circling the island was a hopeful sign.

The only signs of human activity are a weather station (doubling as a Brown Booby nest),

... and a rusting locomotive from the days when the bird guano was harvested commercially.

The sunsets from the beach were pretty spectacular.

At night, the only light comes from the moon.

Our nightly aperitif of rum and peanuts.

Stephane and Elodie at work, watched by a Red-footed Booby.

While I usually had my hands full during the day, each morning I got up at 5 to walk around the island and take as many photos as possible. As you can imagine, I had to severely edit the number of photos, and I've grouped the best of the photos by subject below. Enjoy!

Posted by rjhall at December 14, 2006 4:07 PM