Seychelles island 4: Bird Island, by land, sea and air

Of all the islands, it was one just a single square kilometre in size and a half-hour flight north of the capital which stole our heart.  Without doubt, this was one of the most fantastic twenty-four hours we’ve ever had.

You can reach the island by air or sea, but as this was a special, short-stay treat, we flew - perhaps an appropriate way to reach Bird Island.

But this was no Airbus: just four of us wedged into the tiny plane, feeling every gust and bump of the air-current.  It was fun, though - if a little unusual - to just lean forward and have a little chat with the pilot in his cockpit.

Arrival was similarly personal – the owner wandered over to welcome us on the grass airstrip, and her assistant smilingly explained “no aircon, no windows… and this  is your tv”, gesturing to the view of the island!  We loved it - not least as we were greeted in our room with a bottle of fizz and a lovely note from Zia & Madeleine (whose hugely generous treat this was), on the back of one of his fantastic photographs of the island.

We were here primarily for the birds, but first we admired an amazing specimen of land animal:  the giant tortoise.

When sailors first started landing on the Seychelles in the eighteenth century, they blithely killed and ate them.  Luckily a few were also taken as pets, and over the decades – centuries – there was a gradual appreciation that these are incredibly special, long-living animals.  Sadly, by then they had nearly all been butchered, and this gentle, peaceful creature was completely wiped out from all of the Indian Ocean – except, fortunately, for one remote island of the Seychelles.

Happily we now live in different times.  Today there are several giant tortoises on Bird - they’re not easy to tell apart, but we were reliably informed that Esmeralda is the world’s oldest at 170 years.   She gently lumbered around, ignoring us as if she had all the time in the world, which I suppose she does.  Or maybe she was just unimpressed with humans – it took us an awful long time to realise, only recently, that Esmeralda is in fact a male!

If the tortoise was adorable on land, its relative was just beautiful in the water.  I steered clear of the stingray, but was immensely privileged to float directly above a hawkbill turtle for what seemed like an eternity, as she grazed peacefully on seagrass, as gently oblivious as her landlubbing cousin earlier.  She (or he) was utterly beautiful.

A word about snorkelling, as it was my first time. “You see and experience things… in a way that is completely different from any other.  You are in nature, part and parcel of it, in a far more complete and intense way than on dry land, and your sense of the present is overwhelming”. 

Roger Deakin’s description in his remarkable book ‘Warterlog’ is true of swimming, and even more so of snorkelling.  I was amazed by the experience:  the mask means you see and breathe as normal, and the buoyancy of your body lets you totally relax, flinding an equilibrium which leaves you floating in the perfect position, just below the surface.  I’m no swimmer, but with the simplest of snorkelling gear I could glide like a fish, changing direction with the merest wave of a hand or tweak of a foot.  Now I think I understand TS White when he said “there is practically no difference between flying in the water and flying in the air”.

Which brings us to the main residents of the island - those who swoop through the skies.  I've always envied birds, as they often seem to have the best of everything - happy waddling over land, diving into the sea, and mastering the skies.

And the bird-life here was truly exceptional:  the vibrant red Madagascan fody was the brightest, the white-tailed tropicbirds the most elegant – and their chicks, safely hatched at the base of treetrunks, easily the cutest!

I was particularly struck by the high-flying frigates, who bore a strong and slightly sinister resemblance to prehistoric pterodactyls.

But the stars are the sooty terns.  Hundreds of thousands crammed into a colony at the far end of the island, the sheer numbers amazing and ultimately hard to comprehend.  I was dazed – and hugely impressed.

Best of all, the island is now an official nature reserve, so there is no threat to these birds – and they respond by flying, swimming or walking all around you.

On land, sea, and particularly in the air – Bird Island really was an experience of a lifetime.