Coastal birds

[Julian Robinson <>]

I found coastal birds very hard going on the w/end, my first real attempt
to identify beach type birds.  Yesterday I walked from our campsite
at Termeil north along the beach to Tabourie. There weren't many sea
birds apart from an impressively large Sea-eagle, but I did see a
Fan-tail Cuckoo perched on top of the small  sandhills, on low
shrubby veg right on the beach.  This surprised me since I thought
they were tree-birds and not a beach-type bird.  

But I had troubles with these plovers... there were 4 of them together,
only on getting home did I realise they were two different species(!),
and my guides have me foxed although I realise that migration and
breeding variations in plumage make sea birds a bit of a
challenge.

Bird A below seems to be a Double-banded Plover in intermediate plumage,
but then I see that the guides point out as diagnostic that the Ringed
Plovers are the only ones with the white collar going right round and
over the back, as this one does.  This one also doesn't have yellow
legs so pretty sure it is not a RP, but it still has a clear all-round
collar which contradicts the diagnostic point.
  
Any thoughts?

Bird B below I'm guessing a female or non-breeding Red-capped Plover but
don't know which.  

BBBBB

Bird C (Tabourie) seems like a Caspian Tern but again they were beside
Silver Gulls and almost the same size which confused me a bit, and the
variation in colouring shown is not reflected in any of my 5 guides. One
was almost white and the other dark grey, not a trompe-de-camera (to
borrow Roger's phrase) but actually there...

I would be interested in any comment on the variability of sea and beach
birds and my confusions. 

((These image totalled 75KB but will be increased by email formatting, I
can't measure final size but it should be less than the current 100K
limit.))
 
Julian