I wasn’t alone the first time I ventured into the killing field. Eventually they become mummified, wrapped in a macabre blanket of seeds and twigs and dirt, slowly starving to death or, in what may be more humane, being picked off by scavengers. Before long they are covered in so many seed pods they can’t move their wings. They try to shake the annoyances loose, only to add another one … and another … and another. Every day countless black noddies living the good life brush up against sticky seed pods. No words can do justice to the carnage that is Lady Musgrave Island’s lagoon walk. A lot of them, though, weren’t going to be making the return trip because they were being massacred by the very trees they had come in search of. It is estimated that from late August until May a colony of about 40,000 visit, nest and fish around the island group to which Lady Musgrave belongs. The birds were black noddy terns and they had arrived on the island after flying non-stop from the warmer climes of Papua New Guinea. Each day we would make the trek across the island to explore the lagoon’s reef wall and each day we would do so while trying not to step on the birds dying the cruellest of deaths at the hands of a callous soul called Mother Nature. What no one had mentioned was the killing field, a 450-metre walking track that links the camping area with Lady Musgrave’s spectacular, protected lagoon where day trippers snorkel off the back of a three-level pontoon and luxury boats anchor for days on end. A turtle swimming above the coral in Lady Musgrave Island’s spectacular lagoon.

Magical trees and birds