Travel Guide Bird

An island for loners? With a few thousand neighbours on 1 km², not really... Silver Plover, Zebra Plover, Frigatebird, Red-footed Booby, Shearwater Shearwater, Yellow-billed Tropicbird, Woodpecker, Green Heron, Marian Noddy, Strawtail and all kinds of terns: these neighbours will never be accused of making a noise at night. The Bird coral deserves its name, especially from May to September, when 2 million terns colonize it to nest. However, the island where the birds are kings remains officially named "Cow Island", the abundance of sea cows (actually dugongs) on its shores having justified this first appellation, which appeared in 1756. Fifteen years later, the English renamed it Bird Island, because of the "countless birds" that were then mentioned in a report by the master of the cruiser Eagle. In 1787, the Frenchman Malavois alluded to the "scarcity of trees for wood" and "a single pool of fresh water with a bad taste". Another French ship, Hirondelle, was shipwrecked on a nearby reef in 1808, with 180 privateers on board, the survivors having spent 22 days on the island before sailing to Mahé on a raft. Following the passage of another boat, history still records the presence, in 1882, of two inhabitants who salted fish and birds, but no more is known. From 1895 to 1905, the bird droppings gave rise to an important trade in guano: 17,000 tons of this fertilizer were exported during this decade, which made Bird a very lively island, with nearly a hundred workers. It is also known that in the 1930s Bird's land was used to grow cotton, coconut and papaya. All of these activities contributed to the decimation of the wire tern population, with only 65,000 pairs confined to the sandbanks on the northern tip of the island, according to a census. This decline was due not only to this habitat problem, but also to the over-collection of eggs, it is true, so famous. At the turn of the century, some 40,000 crates of 1,000 eggs each were collected during the egg-laying season. It is therefore understandable that the island was partly cleared in order to facilitate the lucrative recovery of these eggs. Still less wooded than most other coral islands, Bird has nevertheless partially regained its vegetation: filaos, coconut and papaya trees. Anchored a little over 100 km from Mahé, this private land, 1,500 m long and 600 m wide, the northernmost of the archipelago, lies at the northern limit of the underwater plateau known as the Seychelles Bank. A few miles away, the coral reef suddenly stops in front of an abyss of about 2 km, suitable for deep-sea fishing. A barrier also conducive to snorkeling that the customers love so much, who first came here to rub shoulders with birds, so not so shy that they quickly make you understand that you are at home, and not the other way around. But the idol of the island remains Her Majesty Esmeralda, the most famous turtle of the Seychelles, one of the heaviest (304 kg) and oldest on the planet (about 200 years old). A real star, this turtle... male and always ready to pose! On the beach, there are hawksbills, marine turtles that have chosen Bird as their preferred breeding place from October to February. We can see them frequently, during the day, on this sand where they like to lay their eggs. They too have found here a perfect place to perpetuate the species. History does not say if, due to the absence of TV, some guests of the neighbouring cottages take advantage of the long evenings to imitate them... The lodge offers in any case some sports activities. This life-size island will delight lovers of purity. Four times a week, a half-hour flight is enough for Air Seychelles' small twin-engine aircraft to connect Mahé to the grassy trail of this 70 ha island, a mecca for nature tourism.