One of the most attractive birds of the Seychelles Islands is the Fairy Tern. Air Seychelles has adopted it as its logo.

It breeds all year round, mainly on Cousin, where these photos were taken, and on Aride. It lays only one egg, directly onto a bare branch. Sadly, ornithological politics is changing its name to 'Common White Tern', which is a major comedown for this beautiful bird.

	Another beautiful bird seen flying offshore is the White-tailed Tropicbird, which breeds in huge numbers on Aride alongside its much rarer Red-tailed relative. It also breeds on several other islands
All photos on this page were taken on Cousin.
	The common Noddy has its main world breeding site on Aride, but it also breeds on Cousin.
		Cousin is an island wildlife reserve. Visitors arrive on organised tours and are taken around the island by the wardens. While this means that you get logs of interesting information, the need to keep up with the group makes photography very rushed.
The native Seychelles Fody or toktok is restricted to Cousin, Cousine and Fregate islands.	The introduced Madagascar Fody, locally called cardinal, has become much more widespread than the toktok.

  All text and images copyright © Liz Leyden, 2005.
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