Ascension has other famous animals. There were originally three birds but cats got two of them. The Ascension Frigate survived on an offshore island. Cats have been eliminated and seabirds are thriving again. We went to the enormous sooty tern colony Onchyprion fuscata. These birds return to breed every 9.6 months. Go figure, as the Americans say. No-one yet has. Here is your correspondent at the colony, with one of the residents demonstrating a laissez faire approach to my presence:

The biggest native land animal was a crab which is still extant in large numbers although its future is not yet assured. Here it is; a big one will be at least 50 years old and measure about 150mm across the back:

Johngarthia lagostoma 
These are present is several colour morphs from red to yellow to black, but they are all the same species. Note the rounded edges of the shell, in contrast to marine species which are usually sharply pointed; this is to enable easy movement through terrestrial vegetation and is typical of land crabs. They indulge in a mass spawning once each year, predictably migrating down to the sea for four nights during the waning moon in February - as luck would have it, ending just before the arrival of VS. Crabs, evolving in the sea, have not shaken off their origins any more than turtles, evolving on land, have done. Each must still return to its ancestral habitat to reproduce. A female crab releases about 100 000 eggs in four seconds, and a larva has to be extremely lucky to wash up on Ascension's shores at just the right time a few weeks later if it is to survive. 

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