BIRDS

WAIT YOUR TERN

- BY FAANSIE PEACOCK

Two little eyes stare at me from between the soap dish and the tap. My brain freezes for a moment and I stand there with my toothbrush in my mouth and toothpaste dribbling down my chin. What in the world? It’s a red-legged kassina – a lifer for me. I know it’s a frog, but still… I take it as a good sign for the day ahead.

We’re on the San Sebastian Peninsula in Mozambique, a finger of land that juts into the Indian Ocean south of Vilankulo, and we’re looking for the very special Saunders’s tern. These cute birds were first recorded in southern Africa as recently as 2019 and their movements remain a mystery: After they’ve nested along the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa, they seemingly disappear off the face of the earth.

But finding these tiny terns in a 350 km² lagoon filled with sandbars, channels and islands is easier said than done…

We slip and slide down a dune and wade through the mangroves to the boat. Crab plovers watch us sleepily, terek sandpipers screech when we disturb them, and olive bee-eaters bake in the morning sun.

Everything is loaded in the boat and we’re slathered with sunscreen. We make our way into the blue. It’s hard to see where the lagoon ends and the sky begins. We’re in the experienced hands of a local skipper. He glides through a network of channels that changes after every storm. How does he know where we are? Finally, he switches off the engine, coasts a while and lightly bumps the boat against the sand.