birding-aus

Kentish Plover update

To: "" <>
Subject: Kentish Plover update
From: Rohan Clarke <>
Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2002 11:29:35 +1100
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

<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>
Admin

The University of NSW School of Computer and Engineering takes no responsibility for the contents of this archive. It is purely a compilation of material sent by many people to the birding-aus mailing list. It has not been checked for accuracy nor its content verified in any way. If you wish to get material removed from the archive or have other queries about the archive e-mail Andrew Taylor at this address: andrewt@cse.unsw.EDU.AU