Hello everyone,
Listed below are the amalgamated results of last Thursday's (8-2-01)
survey on the Caloundra sandbanks. We missed a lot of birds. The
weather was appalling. Hats off to Julie Moore and Jill Harbison, who
drove a long way to come out with Barb Dickson & myself despite the
rotten weather, and kept a smile on their faces even whilst we were
counting in pelting rain. It was a frustrating count, because we
achieved a total on one sandbanks, then lost all visibility in the
rain, and had a gap of about an hour while we waited indoors for the
rain to clear. Later, when we looked out from the shoreline to the
sandbanks, there were a lot more birds present than had been there
earlier, but we had to let them go uncounted. The sandbanks were a
writhing mass of grey from the shoreline - terns on a grand scale.
The "unidentified terns" (below) are those which are counted from the
shoreline against the fading sky light as they fly in to roost for
the night, and which we are unable to identify beyond "tern".
However. it was worth noting that whilst there were few Crested Terns
on the sandbanks during the head counts, there were large numbers
flying in at last light. This is typical Crested Tern behaviour and
is our first sighting of large numbers of Cresteds returned after
breeding. We missed the previous week's survey because of even worse
weather, but understand that they (Cresteds) began to arrive in large
numbers during the week we missed.
A pleasant surprise was a single Lesser Crested Tern, a first for our
visitors. Also noteworthy were the 1390 White-winged Black Terns, the
biggest flock I have counted before in Caloundra (or anywhere).
TOTAL NUMBER OF SPECIES 22
TOTAL NUMBER OF BIRDS 16916
SPECIES LIST
Tern, Common 6610
Tern, Crested 20
Tern, Little 1077
Tern, White-winged 1390
Tern spp 1 (this was the Lesser Crested)
Gull, Silver 156
Terns unidentified 7350 (most were Commons, but can
only guess the proportion)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Curlew, Eastern 4
Whimbrel 2
Godwit, Bar-tailed 169
Sandpiper, Curlew 12
Greenshank 1
Sandpiper, Terek 2
Stint, Red-necked 2
Tattler, Grey-tailed 16
Plover, Greater Sand 8
Plover, Lesser Sand 1
Plover, Red-capped 16
Plover, Pacific Golden 60
Cormorant, Little Pied 11
Cormorant, Little Black 7
Osprey 1
--
Jill Dening
Sunshine Coast, Qld
26º 51' 152º 56'
Ph (07) 5494 0994
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