Coastal birds

["Mark Clayton" <>]

Hi Julian,

 

A quick reply, A = Double-banded Plover coming in to breeding plumage before heading off to NZ where they breed, B= Red-capped Plover, possibly female as you suggest, and C= Caspian Tern possibly coming in to breeding plumage. Yes, they are a big tern and that beak can give a painful bite (from experience).

 

Cheers,

 

Mark

 

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From: Julian Robinson [
Sent: Monday, 27 August 2007 2:52 PM
To:
Subject: [canberrabirds] Coastal birds

 

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