A week after we got the Wattled Lapwing at Paardevlei we set off to chase another rarity, a Black Tern that was found around the coast near Fisherhaven. The trip is relatively short from here, about 45 minutes to an hour.
After a relatively uneventful drive, we arrived at the location pin. Well, the closest we could get to it, as the GPS took us towards the Mereenbosch private estate, where we weren’t able to access. A quick exchange over WhatsApp with Trevor Hardaker and he set us on the correct route, a gravel road that led to a small parking lot around 1.5km from the pin.
In the parking lot, we met another birder who encountered the same Mereenbosch issue that we had just had. He’d seen the birding sticker on the back of my car and figured out following us may lead to a successful route.
He joined us on the fairly long walk across the crusted remnants of strange oceanic growth (scientific, I know). We could see a couple of other birders standing across the lagoon scouting the tern roost. There were maybe 100 to 150 birds in the roost, so while not terrible for scanning, it wasn’t easy, especially without a scope.
Species included a lot of Swift Terns, Sandwich Terns, and Common Terns.
We realized that spotting the bird in the roost without a scope would be really challenging, so we started to focus mainly on the flying birds, and at one point the entire roost even flushed to relocate. We tried our best to spot the darker underwings and the distinct dark that runs below the front of the ring, but we weren’t able to do so. I wasn’t exactly sure how different of a bird I was looking for…
The four of us stood, scanning the roost and any terns flying past us, but after about an hour and a half to two hours later, there still wasn’t a sign of the bird. The other twitchers decided to call it a day, which was understandable given the sun beating down on us for hours.
Unfortunately for them, as so often happens in birding – not 10 minutes after they left, I spotted a bird near us that, fishing in the lagoon, was distinct from all others. Immediately I knew it was the best candidate, it seemed smaller than most of the other terns and had a distinctively darker appearance. I had my bins on me at the time, so I quickly switched to my camera to try and get a good shot, but by the time I had fired off my shots the bird was already moving away from us.
Still, I quickly switched to the back of my camera to see if I managed to capture any diagnostic features. Boom! One of the shots showed the diagnostic marking, clinching the decision and leaving us with mixed emotions. On one hand, we were stoked to have both seen the bird and relatively good views – but on the other hand we couldn’t help but feel for the three gentlemen who had just left the scene minutes earlier.
All in all, we may not have had a lot of bird diversity, but it was good to get out and even better to connect with the bird. It was one of 4 remaining terns I needed in the Western Cape.
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