The Journey to Bird Rock - Part 2

On the afternoon of Friday, March 13, my son Jason and I went back to Greenridge's, St. Lucy to investigate two lookout points we saw on our last visit to Bird Rock on March 7th.  The hope was to find a better and much assessable point to view Audubon's Shearwaters (Puffinus lherminieri) nesting colony. The first location took us to the end of Greenridge's road, then hiked to a peninsular called Touces Point, which had us looking southward towards the Rock Stacks at Bird Rock.  While this location in itself gave a good almost frontal view of the colony, it was just too far away for night viewing. We did take note of another projection that would give us that same look but closer, in fact, this may be a prime location. We went in search of the location but found it difficult so we made our way to the second point we saw, location 3 on the map.

Getting a bit disoriented and lost we stopped and asked the directions of a man and woman who was busy cleaning in front of their house. The man gave us the directions and asked if we were going fishing?  I told him about our quest to see these birds that nest in the rocks just over the cliff. To my surprise, he knew about them, he knew about the Audubon's Shearwaters, but of course not by name.  He referred to them as “Cobblers”, or “small black birds with long wings”, he said he saw plenty of them on the mornings when he used to go fishing a long time ago. This got me excited for two reasons, (1) this breeding colony that was first reported on in the mid -1700s was still active, and (2) there is a possibility of seeing these birds during daylight hours.  

We followed the directions given to us by the man,  and in no time we at location 3.  I gave us a view almost directly overlooking Bird Rock.  My heart skipped a beat when I saw a bird, dark above and with a white underbelly, flying above the rocks but it was just a few Caribbean Martins (Progne dominicensis),  we spent about 30 minutes at that lookout at which point it was almost dark.  

Peregrine Falcon

The most exciting thing we saw was a Peregrine Falcon(Falco peregrinus), which we tried to make a Bat Falcon (Falco rufigularis), perched on a tree not too far away from the rock stacks.   This was the perfect location, it was accessible, and had a great side view of Bird Rock.  The land the location 3 was connected to an old plantation, of which the main house had just been renovated. After a series of visits, I finally met the owner of the land, Mr. Gill.  I asked for permission to visit this prime birding watch spot on his land and explained to him the reason, to see a rare breeding bird. Mr. Gill said ok, it was not a problem, he said just let him know when we are going.

The trip to Bird Rock now has an easily accessible observation point.  This is good news for our Journey to Bird Rock.