Departing American Samoa

Day 5 was Sunday, December 10, 2023.  We arrived 15 minutes early to the meeting place at Oasi Harbor, a small but functioning facility built by the US Army Corps of Engineers decades ago. Our boat captain arrived a few minutes later sans boat. He had arranged to use a family member’s 31-foot pontoon boat. However it turned out that the boat was needed to transport materials to the village on Aunu’u, a small island just off the eastern coast of Tutuila.  

I was relieved that the boat was postponed as the surf was high and waves were >4 feet high. The boat captain, Peter Taliva’a, invited us to his home in a nearby village for coffee. Peter spoke English fluently and was very knowledgeable about Samoan history and culture. He regularly leads tours of Aunu’u island for cruise ship passengers who dock at the port of Pago Pago. 

Peter offered for his deckhand, Mike Levi, to accompany us to Aunu’u for the remainder of the morning, particularly to look for Pacific Black Duck. So we returned to the tiny harbor with Mike, a native Samoan who spoke little English and boarded the next passenger ferry (also a 31-foot pontoon motor boat) for Aunu’u. 

We spent four hours on this remote island. The island has five principal ecosystems: village, rocky shoreline (exposing a coral reef at low tide), mangrove swamp, rainforest and a 

freshwater volcanic caldera. The diversity of ecosystems provided habitat for most of the bird species of American Samoa. We observed 23 species of birds there, including some noteworthy ones, such as Gray-tailed Tattler and Long-tailed Koel in the mangrove swamp, and nesting White-tailed Tropicbird in the rain forest, Pacific Black Duck (Biggest Year-Bird #848) in the caldera, Australasian Swamphen and Buff-banded Rail in a taro farm on the outskirts of the village. We also had a sighting of two flyby curlews that seemed smaller than Whimbrel. We left them as unidentified but I suspected these were Little Curlew, a migrant from the Asian continent. This was the species that did get away!

The small population of Pacific Black Duck on Aunu’u is noteworthy for being the easternmost outpost of the species. We heard there are fewer than 20, and we saw half of these. They are apparently absent from other locations in American Samoa. The species is also known as Australian Grey Duck.

We returned to mainland Tutuila with Mike via ferry and joined Peter at his house for a late lunch. We made plans for Peter to take us out to sea the following day (which was Day 6, our final day in American Samoa).

On the morning of Wednesday, December 13, 2023, we met Peter and Mike at the Fagatogo marina in Pago Pago harbor which was very close to our hotel. The pontoon motorboat chugged through the harbor and picked up speed at the mouth of the harbor. The seas were much calmer today but there were still occasional six-foot swells which knocked the boat around. I was happy to have a scopolamine patch that I stuck behind my ear to ward off seasickness. 

As for birds, we saw mostly Brown Booby and Red-footed Booby, White Tern, Brown Noddy, Black Noddy and  Blue-gray Noddy. We got close to a White-tailed Tropicbird resting on the water. We eventually observed two Wedge-tailed Shearwater (both dark morph) and a Tropical Shearwater (849). No storm-petrels or petrels. Hiring the boat for four hours was an expensive way to add one more bird for my list. The cost was $500 not including tip. At this stage of my year-long quest for 900 species, new ones don’t come cheaply. 

Looking back at my time in American Samoa, I recorded 19 new species for the USA and Territories Biggest Year. Pretty much on target. The scenery at Tutuila Island was spectacular and although bird diversity is low, it was fun to bird. In all, we reported 36 species, putting Oliver and me well within the top 10 contributors of eBird reports for the Territory (for all years combined). This may be a reflection of lack of local contributors to eBird, more than anything else. But we feel like we saw most of what was possible. You can visit the list of species seen along with photos and audio files in the eBird Trip Report accessible here: 

https://ebird.org/tripreport/206106.

I found out that the pelagic boat trip from Kona (Hawaii) on December 16, 2023, being offered by Hawaiian birding guide Mandy Talpas, was canceled. This was disappointing because the biggest source of new species for me within the ABA Area are indeed sea birds. 

At 849 species I may yet reach 900 species by December 31 but it won’t be easy. I’m hoping for forty new species during my scheduled 10-day tour of Guam and the northern Mariana’s where I would be accompanied by my sharp-eyed son, Nick Jr. That leaves me with four days in Hawaii and three days on the U.S. mainland to find 11 more species. Challenging but doable with a little luck and a little help from my friends.