Travels of Wildcat: North Sound, Antigua

Cacophony. It’s one of the best words to describe the sounds of the many birds nesting and living on the islands of the north coast of Antigua. Both Antigua and Barbuda have perfect nesting conditions for sea birds. Away from civilization, leeward craggy sides of islands, and plentiful fish. We’ve been spending these days listening to cackles, coos, caws, and chirps. When we get marginally close to any of the islands we are met with a brigade of mother and father birds steering us far away from their babies. It’s all very lovely. We’ve mostly been by ourselves here in the north with an occasional boat anchored far away, but visible.

We’ve been in Antigua for a month and a half now. As a country it also includes the island of Barbuda. The islands are very different and we’ve enjoyed the civilization of Antigua and the remoteness of Barbuda. On Barbuda we journeyed with a guide and our cruising friends to the frigate bird nesting grounds. Cacophony there as well, plus a dazzling flying display from these large-winged birds. Only the mother and baby birds remained because the father birds leave once their work is done.

So here in Antigua around islands named Great Bird, Rabbit, Galley, Red Head, Maiden and Long we’re seeing sooty terns, brown noddies, laughing gulls, and male frigates. The snorkeling has been interesting. Lots of small fish. Even the one barracuda we saw was small. We dinghied over to a place called Hell’s Gate to snorkel and take some pictures. Once in the water, we were amazed to find thousands and thousands of 1 ½ inch silversides. It was like swimming into a blizzard of fish. Every move we made caused several hundred to stream in perfect unison around us. It was spectacular. We swam under the arch and sat in 1 foot of water looking out into the Atlantic Ocean with baby sargeant major fish curiously checking us out.

This is a satellite view taken from the "Where's Wildcat" link on the left when we were at RedHead (Our boat is at the spot labelled WB2LDV - Pam's ham radio call sign). You can see the Atlantic Ocean lying to the east (right hand side) with only the reef and few small rocky islets providing protection.