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Hi
all,
A belated update on the
Kentish Plover. It was present on the shingle on the ocean beach (as described
by others) on Tuesday 19th. I know it's been reported since then to this forum
but the interesting thing was Neil Macumber and I first located the bird on the
shingle at 8am when the tide was quite low. It sat here for about 20 mins then
when two Red-capped Plovers suddenly took flight it spent a fair bit of time
looking skyward before walking up the beach and into the fenced area of dunes.
About half an hour later we re-located it on a little shingle beach on the inlet
side of the fenced area. It then moved to a low sand island where it foraged
until we left at about 10:30. Most people seem to have seen it on high tide but
that might be because most people are looking on the ocean beach at high
tide!
As others have pointed
out it is extremely cryptic in amongst the shingle. When we first arrived we
found 10 Red-capped Plover (which we scanned through with the scope). We then
moved along the beach and again scanned through the Red-capped Plover, again
counting ten. After about 5 minutes of looking through these birds and just
before we moved further along the beach yet another scan revealed the Kentish
Plover almost totally obscured by small rocks in amongst the Red-caps....t had
clearly been there all along. Take home message (which was impressed on me by M.
Carter, T Palliser and others) is it is very easily overlooked amongst the
shingle.
I hope additional info
is of use to those of you who visit in the next few
days.
Regards
Rohan
Rohan Clarke
PhD
Candidate
'Conservation Biology of the
Black-eared Miner'
Department of
Zoology
La Trobe University
Bundoora Vic. 3083
Tel 03
9479 1672
Fax 03 94791551
Email
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