Natural Selection

Lesser Yellowlegs by me, but taken in Canada when our cruise was diverted in 2023

Before breakfast Jane and I got up early and went up the beach. It’s really pleasant walking alongside the surf before it gets crowded. When I approached the lagoon I realised my camera was ‘on’. Given I’d not turned it on that meant it was on overnight, and therefore not on. Bugger, well at least there wasn’t likely to be anything new in to see.

Except there was. A Lesser Yellowlegs, an American wader, was at the seaward end of the pool. If the camera was working I’d have had nice shots. As it was I had to use my phone to record the call, which is a bit of a lottery. On this occasion it worked well and you can hear the results here, along with a cringing mobile phone picture if you read this blog before I remove that for reasons that will become clear when we get to Day 4.

/https://ebird.org/checklist/S278912283

Lesser Yellowlegs aren’t ‘rare rare’ on Cape Verde, but they are certainly scarce and worth documenting. The eBird situation is currently a bit of a mess though. It’s classed as a rarity, so you need to submit extra details for it to get validated. It’s then not validated and it sits in limbo whilst everything else you see that day is cheerily validated on the system. I’m not the only person frustrated by this anomaly, and hopefully it will get sorted soon.

Anyway it was pleasing to get something on the board in terms of good birds. When we returned in the evening with a charge camera there was no sign of it. On the way back the Brown Boobies were however putting on a superb show fishing between swimming tourist. I even managed to catch one mid-dive.

We need the Gannets that regularly pass close in off Blackpool to do this sort of thing. It would get a lot of tourists more interested in the local seabirds.