Orb Weavers

The white-tailed tropic birds (aka “golden bosuns”) continue to elude me, at least when I have a camera in hand; three of them were swooping overhead as we returned from diving this morning, but during the several hours that we were out on the cliffs taking photos they disappeared almost completely. These birds are clearly playing some sort of twisted mind game with me, and so far they are winning.

Today was our last day of diving on Christmas Island, and despite seas that looked like they were going to be rough, the trip out to our dive site in Hama’s small boat wasn’t the roller coaster we expected. The dive crew consists of Hama, the company owner, and Lynny, a 75 year old divemaster who you would guess was in her fifties based on how she gets around on the boat. She’s also got a memorable personality: today we had two other people scuba diving with us who are also avid free divers, and they mentioned being able to free dive to depths of 70+ meters. With steep dropoffs all around the island (it’s an ancient volcano) Lynny said to them after our first dive “I saw you two swimming out to the edge there and look down, and thought to myself ‘good god they better not'”. Thankfully no one decided to test the limits of their dive equipment today, and we had another good day of diving.

After saying thanks and goodbye to Lynny and Hama we went off again to see the birds, although it also turned out to be a trip to find several softball-sized spiders for my arachnid-loving travel companion. At one point one of their massive webs blocked half of the trail down to the cliff edge, and while Audrey says the orb weavers aren’t dangerous, I strongly suspect that particular spider web was built with hopes and dreams of ensnaring a hiker.

On our second birding stop a red-footed booby had somehow managed to get itself onto the wrong side of the cliff-edge fence, and was in a panic trying to take off through the wire, so I got to play the role of booby rescuer as I gently lifted the bird to the top of the fence where it had the airspace needed to take flight. Oddly it calmed down completely when I picked it up, briefly assessed its situation from its new perch, and eventually took a dive off of the cliff and glided back to its home as if nothing was amiss. Operation booby rescue thus ended in a massive success, making the lack of cooperation from the golden bosuns an easier pill to swallow.

We’ve got a day and a half remaining on the island, so tomorrow we’re planning to head to the far side through the jungle. We’re pretty sure our rental car will survive the “road” that leads there, but the police station loans out personal locator beacons to reduce the number of people disappearing without a trace, so we may take them up on that loan offer before departing.