Sao Tome: White-tailed Tropicbirds at Santa Catarina Coast
The steep rock cliffs of the western São Tomé host nesting white-tailed tropic birds – beautifully soaring along the shoreline. Tropicbirds are seabirds, spending most of their lifetime at sea and only coming to shore to lay a single egg onto steep ledges of often near-vertical rocks. The birds are very graceful in flight, with long tails. When feeding, they go for flying fish and squid, diving quite deep like gannets. Besides tropicbirds we saw several other bird species, some likely endemic to the island – shags, hawks, and more.
