WE’VE SPENT A LOT OF TIME IN THE AIR. Besides the long flights on Qatar Airlines, we hopped from Mahe to Praslin and back, then flew to Mauritius and on to Rodriques and back. And we still have another to Reunion.
Mascarene paradise fly-catcher
The same driver met us at the airport yesterday and drove us directly to Vallee de Ferney where we hoped to see the Mauritius kestrel and the endemic Mauritius white-eye, which unlike the Seychelles version, doesn’t have a white eye. Go figure.
Today we drove to Black River Gorge National Park, home to the Mauritius cuckoo-shrike, the echo parakeet and Mascarene paradise fly-catcher. Birdman missed this one in 2000 when there were only a dozen or so on the island but Dan managed to call one in just as we were about to give up.
Mauritius White-eye
We voted — or vetoed — Dan’s ad lib dawn excursion this morning in favor of a real hotel breakfast. We already knew our flight to Reunion would be late, not uncommon on Air Mauritius, but it was further delayed while we were at the airport so we spent three hours waiting for a 30-minute flight. After checking into our hotel in St. Denis, we drove for more than an hour south to see Barau’s Petrels returning from the sea, our first Reunion endemic.
