On Sat and Sun I took some digital video and some photoshots
(stills) of the one bird still present.
But impossible to get a close up... Had to use up to
100X...any closer with the camera and tripod the bird would flush. And of
course the bird would always feed away from me at a slow walk. (Is this another
Law of Birding ?)
I've had a quick look at the Sat videos and still not
sure...but leaning towards the Grey Plover because of size and the beak.
A big advantage of the digital record is I can advance it one
frame at a time and even at a magnification of 100X I can make out
faint wing markings when it flew... The Google search engine
threw up plenty of illustrations but either breeding or non-breeding...nothing
in between.
And as in a several days I will be going away to a spot
west of Doomadgee for a weeks atlassing it will be a while before I
can check out the tapes in detail.
Very frustrating as I know nothing about the visiting
overseas plovers...and worse, these were in eclipse plumage which are
not illustrated in my references. I have been ignoring the waders but
having got a reasonable grip of the easier birds I said earlier this year I was
going to concentrate on waders when they arrived....but why this ?
I suspect the suns reflection from the Tripods legs and the
polished exterior of the camera were flushing the bird. I had the same result
when trying to get closer to Freckled Ducks near Camooweal (near the NT/Qld
border) a year ago. I have tried painting the
legs matt black...but that rubs off when the legs get collapsed. I am now
wrapping a cloth around the camera and have ordered a tripod with a
non-reflective surface. Why do "they" make this sort
of gear shiny ? Leica Televid Scopes are an example of a stupid finish.
Swarovski and Kowa appear to have non reflective green finish.
Regards, Bob Forsyth, Mount Isa, NW Qld.
