Courtship Dance of the Terns: Birds on Lady Elliot Island

Fellow Baffled Ones and Gentlebears, We hope you are enjoying our tales of Lady Elliot Island. BeeBear went along on behalf of all of Mawson’s friends because she was small in the luggage (Mawson’s own generous proportions were WAY too big) and because she is an experienced aviator. She was thrilled to fly out there across the sea. She came home to tell all of Mawson’s household about the island, the corals she saw in the lagoon, and the great day that she saw turtles at dawn.

A map and brochure of Lady Elliot Island on the Great Barrier Reef

There are thousands of birds on Lady Elliot Island too, and BeeBear did her best to explain how numerous and noisy they all were.

COURTSHIP DANCE: And now fellow BaffledOnes and Gentlebears, as promised, we are proud to present to you, direct from the dance troupes of Lady Elliot Island, the amazing, the wonderful, courtship dance of the terns.

Courtship dance of terns on Lady Elliot Island

‘Oh, will you do the courtship dance, will you do the courtship dance,
Will you do the courtship dance, with handsome, hopeful me?’
‘I might I guess, I really might, I’m making up my mind.
Then again, I like your looks, so let’s lose no more time,’

‘Stick your tail feather up,
Drop your right wing down,
Stand on a leg and pirouette round. .’.

‘Its just a waddle to the left –
no, to your left, your other left –
And let’s do the wing dip now!
Yes, let’s dip the wing dip now!‘

‘.. And a chest boop, And a chest boop,‘
‘And let’s choose a tree, my dear’.

And soon you see couples perched in the trees and making renovations for the nest.

In the nests, on the ground, even right next to the walkways and the buildings, there are parent birds minding fluffy chicks.

Fluffy chick and parent bird by the path on Lady Elliot Island

‘Will you just stay where I put you, junior.’
‘Don’t want to. It’s boring. I’m bored. Where’s Dad and the food?’

Chick screaming to be fed — Feed me, feed me, feed me NOW.

And many chicks are in nests on their own, waiting for their parents, insisting they are famished, that they are fading away, that they need FOOD NOW. Right NOW.

This very new fluffy little fella was right under the veranda of our cabin! Shy though, understandably, and only peeked out briefly when his parent returned.

If you love birds you will absolutely enjoy visiting Lady Elliot Island on the Great Barrier Reef, Queensland, Australia – if any of us can ever travel anyway again. (As a travel tip, we suggest not looking at a rerun of Hitchcocks movie The Birds before you go to the island).

And that’s all we have for you from Lady Elliot Island.

PLEASE FOLLOW US At Baffled Bear Books .
Simply plonk your paw on the FOLLOW buttons on this very page.
You can also follow on Amazon and on GoodReads. We are also on Instagram, and Tiktok, and Anchor/ Spotify and Mastodon (link is @mawsonbear@mastodon.au. )

Mark is guardian and blundering typist for Mawson, one of this bright world’s few published bears.

Birds, Birds, Birds at Lady Elliot Island on the Barrier Reef

Bee Bear has been telling her friends about Lady Elliot Island, her journey there, her explorations of the island, the corals she saw in the lagoon, and whether she saw turtles. But her bird friends at home especially want to know if she saw tropical birds.

She certainly did! Lady Elliot Island is paradise for twitchers (bird spotters.) On this coral quay which is so small that the air-strip cuts right across it (see picture above) there are thousands of birds. They come for the nesting season and peak around November.

It’s high density living here. Birds that usually nest on the ground get squeezed out by the earliest arrivals of the season and so take to the trees instead. They are all over every branch of every tree.

The birds in the picture above were in the trees three metres from our veranda. You can simply sit on your cabin veranda with a camera and take pictures of domestic life among the birds.

Birds that prefer trees have to find themselves a place on the ground. It’s all about high demand for premium real estate.

Everyone is making a racket.
‘Mummy, where are you, I’m hungry!’,
‘Harold, you’ve been ages. It’s your turn to mind your kid’,
‘Steady on, Mabel, I only just got back’,
‘You stayed out at sea deliberately, didn’t you, leaving me stuck here with this squawker’,
‘I did not, Mabel, you’ve no idea how far I had to go for fish ‘,
‘ Hah! A likely story’,
‘Its true. I blame those line trawlers. They’re killing everything.,
‘Oi, You, get off my branch’,
‘Your branch? Hah! It so is not.’
‘It is, it is. Me and Narelle got it first. So get lost’.
‘ You did not, you great big liars, we got it first,’
‘You pinched it!’
‘ You get over here, mate, and try saying that, go on, go on.’
‘ Mummeee, Daddeeeeee! Where’s my fooooood!’

Screeches, calls, warnings, quarrels. On, and on, all night it goes. The resort even provides ear plugs so that guests can sleep at night.

Birds soar everywhere. Outgoing- traffic of the parents leaving chicks to find food in the ocean crosses through incoming traffic of food-laden parents in what looks like an air-traffic controller’s worst nightmare.

The birds are all protected from humans these days, of course, and completely at ease with people. They perch all over the cabin verandas and some venture hopefully toward the diners in the restaurant. They even raise their young right next to the walkways and buildings, including the most unusual bird you see below.

This is the rare Red-tailed Tropic Bird. It’s one of the world’s oldest and most elusive birds. Read more about them here and here. We had the most wonderful good fortune to see a young one and only hundred metres from our cabin.

Just look at this Red-tailed Tropicbird chick hunkered into its ground-nest waiting for its ocean going parents. It was enormous. It was bigger than a full grown chicken. . ‘Food”, it cried, ‘Gimmee foooooood!’ Of course, we didn’t- no feeding of the birds on Lady Elliot Island. But we did wonder how the parents could ever bring back enough food to satisfy this big lad. Both of them were out at sea trying to do just that.

In the next post, fellow Baffled Ones and Gentlebears, we bring you even more birds and more chicks.

You are at Baffled Bear Books, brought to you by Mark, guardian and blundering typist for Mawson Bear, Ponderer of Baffling Things and one of this bright world’s few published bears. Mawson is writer bear of It’s A Bright World To Feel Lost In and of She Ran Away From Love.

Lady Elliot Island on the Great Barrier Reef: the Lagoon

Welcome back to Lady Elliot Island, a coral quay on The Great Barrier Reef, Queensland, Australia. The Barrier Reef, as everyone knows, is the mighty reef down which Nemo’s dad swam to find his little son. We flew here from Perth with BeeBear and walked around exploring ( read about it here.).

BeeBear and the birds and turtles look at a map of Lady Elliot Island

But what do you really want to see at a coral lagoon? The lagoon of course! The glass bottomed boats leave from the beach at the end of the runway that runs through the middle of the island (see aerial viewing pic below)

Lady Elliot Island. The runway stretches from one side to the other

Almost all the trees you see here have been planted in the past 30 years during the patient restoration process – it had been stripped down for the guano in the years before that.

Glass bottom boat on lagoon of Lady Elliot Island

Those buildings on the far left of the photo below are some cabins of the Eco Resort. See how close they are to the sea. We stayed in one of those. They are not fancy because this is a low-impact eco resort. Our glass bottomed boat took us further out to just above the main reef where the water gets more blue and you can see the whole island from here.

View of the beaches of Lady Elliot Island

Out and out we went. In the deeper water above the reef we tourists went snorkling with the boat crew keeping on eye on us so we felt quite safe. The staff on Lady Elliot Island must have the best job in Australia, in the world.

Looking back over the water to Lady Elliot Island

From the boat we saw all kinds of fish and a huge groper and even, briefly, a manta ray. A large green turtle came up from under a coral shelf right in front of me. It was one of those moments that stay in your mind forever. I have no pictures – didn’t have that kind of camera. Besides while you are down there, you just want to experience the moments fully, right there, as you are.

Just visible are the buildings of the eco resort

And what of the coral? The coral is not easy to see in the deeper water especially as the swell builds, and from the boat itself this is about all you can make out (below). The startling blues of the starfish are clearly visible though. We saw lots of coral at low tide and I will show you that later.

Coral as seen through. the bottom of the boat

Don’t worry, I won’t leave you without any photos at all of the wonderful animals in the lagoon, for once back on shore we saw this little fella. He was just turtling along right among the people! It is after all, a turtle’s home, not a peoples’ home.

” I’m just a turtle,
Turtling along,
A happy green turtle,
Burbling a song…”

We settled on a deck chair as evening fell. Would the big female loggerhead turtles clamber up this very beach in the night? Yes, they did! But that’s for another post.

Share the Joy

Share the Joy

Share the Joy