The forecast is for rain all morning tomorrow (today when you are reading this), so I finally have an opportunity to show you the last of my trip pictures. When Anne was searching for flights from Malawai, where we had been for her research, to Delft, where I was going to a conference, they all seemed to go through Nampula, in northeastern Mozambique, so we decided to pop in for a visit to check it out.
Now, Nampula didn’t strike us as much of a tourist destination, but the nearby Island of Mozambique on the other hand, a certified UNESCO World Heritage Site, was another matter. One notable building on the island is the Chapel of Nossa Senhora de Baluarte, which was “built by the Portuguese in 1522″, and is now “considered to be the oldest European building in the southern hemisphere!”
Anyway, the island is “now entirely urbanised,” so the wildlife there has adapted to live near humans, and this is who we saw. One of the most common creatures was the pied crow, same as we saw in Malawi.
There were also plenty of slightly-smaller house crows aka Indian, greynecked, Ceylon, or Colombo crows (Corvus splendens), which I have glimpsed before I started this project, but which is a new bird for us.
I also saw my very first cattle egret (Bubulcus ibis), despite the fact that Estabrook Park appears to be in their breeding range. Perhaps we don’t have enough cattle, with whom I read they “maintain a special relationship”, in the park to attract them.
Given the relative proximity to Lilongwe, we shouldn’t be too surprised to see a blue waxbill as well.
Even though the island is urbanized, it is an island in the Indian Ocean, after all, so some shorebirds might be expected, and here’s a common sandpiper, which we last saw in the Sečovlje Saltpans of Slovenia.
On our last evening on the island, I finally came down with something, probably from the ice in the caipirinha I ill-advisedly enjoyed over dinner, and I was laying low the next morning. That was until Anne came back from her walk all excited about an egret she had seen foraging on the mud exposed by low tide. As the trooper that I like to imagine that I am, I dutifully strapped on my camera and headed out with her to find a slew of little egrets, which we also first saw in Slovenia, but in less-fancy plumage this time.
But there was something else out there, and it kept pretty far from dry land, so it was hard to get a good look at it. At first I thought it was a eurasian curlew, whom we last saw in South Holland, but upon closer inspection, that pretty-clearly “striped crown” marks it as a Eurasian or common whimbrel (Numenius phaeopus) instead, a species I have not seen before. Woo Hoo! Thanks, Mozambique, and thanks, Anne!
Finally, it should come as no surprise that “the most widely distributed wild bird,” which is also “strongly associated with human habitation,” would be found in such a location, and sure enough, here’s a house sparrow.
Back in Estabrook Park, the forecast is mixed for Friday morning, so let’s hope it clears up enough for me to go get some more pictures.
Signs of Life in Estabrook Park 
