I was interested to see someone in the media saying the impact of the
oil spill wouldn't be so bad because many waders had already commenced
their northward migration.
An inspection of the Manly wader roost on Saturday revealed that
numbers for most species were at their summer average. I didn't try
counting the godwits, but would guess there were more than 500
present. I did count about 60 golden plovers and the usual lone Grey
Plover. There seemed to be more Tereks, Sharpies & Curlew Sands than
normal, but only a dozen or so Eastern Curlews. Many of the godwits
and a few of the curlew sands were into their breeding plumage,
relatively few of the golden plovers were far into their moults.
There were about a dozen [lesser to my eyes] sandplovers in breeding
plumage, and the what appeared to be the odd double-bar in faded
breeding plumage. There was a lone greenshank. Overall, stint
numbers were a bit lower than normal and very few had any noticeable
colour. The number of Great Knots was about normal, but they were
mainly laying down. As it was a calm day, the [hundreds of] tattlers
were roosting out in the open.
A couple of Mangrove Bitterns [SH] did a circuit around the roost and
an immature bird landed near me. It had its neck extended upwards,
like a periscope, making it appear a most peculiar bird.
I didn't see any oiled birds at the roost, although it was interesting
to see there was a black residue on a section of the fringe of the
tidal pond. There wasn't any oil on the rocks outside of the roost,
so I suspect that residue might be the result of a separate event.
Regards, Laurie.
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