Waders ready to leave.

Almost time to wave our waders goodbye as they head off to their breeding grounds. The Pacific Golden Plover were showing off their beautiful colours.

Pacific Golden Plover (Pluvialis fulva)

Lesser Sand Plover (Charadrius mongolus)

Whimbrel (Numenius phaeopus)

For more birds visit Wild Bird Wednesday.

Airport Roost

To start off with, I would like to say a big Thank You to Mick for the phone call telling us to get the kayak and come down if we wanted to see the birds before they left on their migration. I have wanted to get photos of the Terek Sandpipers for a long time, but the weather and tides are not always right when we are able to go. On Friday we could not have asked for a better day. The water was dead calm, not a ripple to be seen, no wind, but we did get a little shower of rain just as we put the kayak in the water. By the time we paddled out to the roost the shower had passed, and I was able to get the photos below.

Click on photos to enlarge. 

 

 Black-necked Stork (Ephippiorhynchus asiaticus)

Most times when we see the Black-necked Stork it is off in the distance, but on this day it was very close, hunting for prey in the shallows.

 Common Greenshank 

Australian Pied Oystercatcher (Haematopus longirostris) Little Egret (Egretta garzetta)

 Common Greenshank (Tringa nebularia)

 Grey-tailed Tattler (Heteroscelus brevipes)

 Pacific Golden Plover

 Pacific Golden Plover (Pluvialis fulva)

Terek Sandpiper (Xenus cinereus) 

Grey-tailed Tattler

For more birds visit Wild Bird Wednesday.

Boonooroo

We recently visited Boonooroo which is located on the shores of the Great Sandy Strait, with views to Fraser Island.  Boonooroo is a great place to see waders, one of the few places where you can drive down the road to the waters edge, hop out of the car, and see all the waders up close.

Click on photos.

 Black-winged Stilt (Himantopus himantopus)

Red-kneed Dotterel (Erythrogonys cinctus)

Bar-tailed Godwit (Limosa lapponica)

 Australian Pied Oystercatcher (Haematopus longirostris)

and other waders.

 Red-kneed Dotterel

 Eastern Curlew (Numenius madagascariensis)

 Black-winged Stilt

 Sharp-tailed Sandpiper (Calidris acuminata)

Curlew Sandpiper (Calidris ferruginea)

Black-winged Stilt

Eastern Curlew

Pacific Golden Plover (Pluvialis fulva)

 

 Red-kneed Dotterel

Brumbies seen on the way to Boonooroo.

For more birds visit Wild Bird Wednesday.

Waders

 Wader Time Again

Not many waders around at this time of year. Winter is not a good time to count waders at Mullen's with low tides and cold water to walk through to get to the site. Still and all, 11 Species totaling 96 individual birds is not bad. With showers hanging around I was debating whether to take the camera or not; just as well I had a raincoat for it!

  Red-necked Stint (Calidris ruficollis)

 Pacific Golden Plover (Pluvialis fulva)

 Double-banded Plover (Charadrius bicinctus)

For more birds visit Wild Bird Wednesday.

Tin Can Bay - Cooloola Cove.

Just a selection of birds we came across during a recent wader count at Tin Can Bay and Cooloola Cove, not all that many in number as we are waiting for the waders to return from their Northern breeding grounds. Not too much longer to wait.

Click on photos to enlarge

Caspian Tern (Hydroprogne caspia)

Pacific Golden Plover (Pluvialis fulva)

Silver Gull (Chroicocephalus novaehollandiae)

As we were walking back from the count site we came across a fever of stingrays feeding close inshore. We do not normally see this many, there must have been a lot of food for them in this particular area.

Stingrays

Red-capped Plover & Pacific Golden Plover

Would like to share with you some of the waders we found during our count today. Altogether we counted 1342 birds from 14 species. Among these were Bar-tailed Godwit, Red-capped Plover, Pacific Golden Plover, Lesser Sand Plover, Red-necked Stint and Great Knot. Eastern Curlew numbers seem to be well down this time with only 17 compared to the 185 we counted on the 4/10/09.

Click on photos to enlarge

Red-capped Plover (Charadrius ruficapillus)

Pacific Golden Plover (Pluvialis dominica)