Monday 23 February 2009

Terns & Waders

Early start to the day (5am) as we had a morning Wader Count followed by an afternoon Tern Count. Heading into Tin Can we had good views of 5 Bush Stone-curlews on the golf course. Among species recorded at our first site were 33 Pied Oystercatchers along with 87 Bar-tailed Godwits, some in breeding colour. At the last and most productive site we counted13 species , among these 300 Lesser sand Plover, some showing good colour, 96 Eastern Curlew again in beautiful colour, and 853 Bar-tailed Godwits. A number of the Curlews and Godwits were actively feeding as well. An overall count from all sites gave us a total of 1648 birds.

Inskip Point
As we had to fill in time we decided to go out to Inskip Point where we were to count the Terns

Waiting for the tide to come in and Mick from Sandy Straits and Beyond to arrive.

Soldier Crabs Mictyris longicarpus

Sighting of the day! A Kelp Gull with the much more common Silver Gull
The Kelp is a rare visitor for us here, although we have seen them in Tasmania

Some of the mixed flock of Red-necked Stints, Red-capped Plovers & Lesser sand Plovers
coming in to roost on Inskip.

If you can imagine these 3 photos side by side it would show most of the flock.

We estimated 1500 altogether with more arriving as we were waiting for the Terns to come in.

Total for the day 5958 birds not including the bush birds we saw while filling in waiting for time and tide. Overall a long day but very enjoyable.

10 comments:

Duncan said...

A great day's work Neil!

Kim said...

A lot of birds! Great shots.

Bob Kaufman said...

You had quite a productive day there, Neil, and congratulations on the Kelp gull!

Anonymous said...

Wow Neil, that's a heck of a lot of birds! Great job counting all of those.

I must say, I adore the soldier crab capture. I see why they call them soldier crabs and I love the color!

Neil said...

Thanks Duncan, Kallen, Bob and Cynthia and Larry, It was a long day but seeing the Kelp Gull made it worthwhile.

Kyle said...

Great shots of the gulls, Neil! Looks like you had a great day of shoreline birding.

Neil said...

Thanks Kyle it was a great day out.

Gouldiae said...

G'day Neil,
It looks like your last sentence summed it up. Well done.
Gouldiae

Neil said...

Thanks Gouldiae.

Vickie said...

That gull photo is awesome with both gulls. And I love those little aqua crabs! It makes me laugh to think about coming across such a crowd.