Our final Caribbean landing was to St John's, the capital of Antigua. Antigua is the main island in Antigua and Barbuda. The country comprises these two main islands, with a few more small islands. The size of the two main islands are forty-six and sixty-two square miles, respectively. Virtually all of the ninety-eight thousand population live on Antigua, with under two thousand living on Barbuda.
There is only one endemic species in the country, which is limited to Barbuda: the aptly named Barbuda Warbler. It looks an easy species to see if you could get there. However, Barbuda is about thirty-three miles from St John's. While there is a daily ninety minute ferry service, it leaves at 06:30 in the morning, returning mid-afternoon. It would not be possible to day trip as the cruise ships won't dock early enough in the morning.
Fortunately, there was a potential Caribbean endemic Tick on Antigua for me: West Indian Whistling-duck. On paper, they occur throughout the Bahamas, Greater Antilles and Northern Lesser Antilles. However, I had failed to see any on my first two trips to the Caribbean. I couldn't find a reliable site when we visited Jamaica, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic on the first trip. I had no realistic chance on the second visit, as they are vagrants to St Lucia and Dominica. So, I was pleased to see there were a couple of potential sites close to St John's according to eBird.
I had got well practiced at chartering taxis in the Caribbean, but I struggled on this occasion. I needed to go to the pools by the Galley Bay Hotel which was only six miles or so from St John's. I asked the taxi drivers outside of the port for a price to take me the twenty minute drive, give me a couple of hours there and then return me to the port. The prices were far too steep and none of the drivers would budge. I guess they were holding out for an even more expensive charter from one of the other cruise ships. I ended up walking further into the town and well away from the port, before I found a less greedy taxi driver, who was prepared to charge a reasonable and fair price for both of us.
Off we headed and about twenty minutes later we arrived at the entrance gate to the hotel. The hotel staff on the gate weren't going to let me into the hotel without a reservation. Sometimes you can get access if you want to visit the restaurant, but clearly not here. We tried a bit further along the road and fortunately, the road climbed up a hill which overlooked the hotel lakes. I asked the driver to park up and got the scope out and sat on a rock. Initially, all I could see was a distant Blue-winged Teal and a closer Yellow-crowned Night Heron.
I kept scanning the lake, but if there were Ducks out there, most were roosting on the islands or tucked out of view in the Mangroves that edged the edged the lake. After a while, a Bahama Pintail swam into view. That at least confirmed that there were other Ducks on the lake. Finally, a West Indian Whistling-duck stood up on a distant island. I tried to get a photo, but it was a quarter of a mile away and just too far even for a record shot. Time for Plan B. As we approached the lake and hotel entrance gate, I had seen a road heading off to the right along the edge of the lake. I walked back to the car to ask the driver to try that road. I found a point I could see the lake. The island was down to sixty metres away now, but I was looking through gaps in the trees that fringed the lake and the West Indian Whistling-duck. It was the same story for the Bahama Pintail, albeit I wasn't so worried about that.
I had seen my target species and there was little else I was going to see around the hotel grounds. I asked the taxi driver if we could return to the port. It had been a good set of landings in the Lesser Antilles. I had seen eleven Ticks: Audubon's Shearwater, Grenada Flycatcher, Grenada Dove & Lesser Antillean Tanager (Grenada), Barbados Bullfinch & Masked Duck (Barbados), Martinique Oriole (Martinique), Lesser Antillean Saltator & St Lucia Black Finch (St Lucia), Imperial Parrot (Dominica) and West Indian Whistling-duck (Antigua).
The only dips has been Bridled Quail-dove (scarce and elusive on most islands), White-breasted Thrasher (St Lucia). Additionally, White-breasted Thrasher had been recently split on Martinique, but they occur in the dry arid bush on the East coast of the island and there wasn't time to visit both the Martinique Oriole site as well as to look for the recently split Martinique Thrasher. The final Tick for me was Black Swift, but I would need to visit later in the year during their breeding season. Alternatively, I have a good chance of seeing them if I ever get to the West coast of the US or Canada during the breeding season.
I was back on the ship for a late lunch and I caught up with Jan, Charlotte & Terry. Jan, Terry & I decided to have a final walk into town, while Charlotte planned for a restful afternoon. As we were only heading around the shops, I didn't bother taking the camera. That proved to be the wrong decision as we ended up walking along some Mangroves with a few Green-backed Herons and a few hundred Cattle Egrets. We also saw an endemic Watts's Anole, posing on a gate post: which was easy to photograph with the IPhone.
We were going to spent the evening in the port and depart after we had eaten. The ship was having a farewell to the Caribbean buffet. As part of the entertainment team, we were expected to turn up late for it, so that the guests had the prime seats for the buffet and entertainment. That suited me fine as we could have some time on deck, even if we were only looking from the port.
Our eight days of island hopping was over. Tomorrow we would be back to a full day of surveying on deck from dawn to dusk, except for breakfast & lunch. I was looking forward to getting back to sea again for the next few days with the Azores our next destination in about five days' time. Albeit it didn't work out that way due to the weather.