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Another brief update for birding-aussers planning a
weekend trip to Taree. Roger and Louise McGovern, Jo Wieneke and Barbara Harvey
travelled up from Sydney to Old Bar today, Thursday 21st February.
We arrived at the site at 11.00am about 2 hours
after low tide. The beach was very busy with 4WD's, dog walkers and joggers so
we felt there was little chance that the bird (or any bird) would be on the
beach since it is not very wide. We walked up the river (west) side of the
Little Tern enclosure and scanned the sand bars seeing all the shorebird species
mentioned by Dick Jenkin the other day. We were impressed by a roost of about
300 Common Terns and by several thousand Wedge-tailed Shearwaters active close
to shore all along the ocean side of the spit.
We walked all the way around the isthmus at the
river mouth and back south along the ocean side and arrived at Richard Baxter's
pink cup at 1.30pm with the tide about two hours off high. The Kentish Plover
was on the shingle directly in front of the pink cup and gave great views as it
preened. We had seen a small number of shorebirds move over to the ocean side a
few minutes prior to that, and assume that one of these was the KP. It
would be my view that with the disturbence caused during low to mid tide (there
is no space on the beach for 4WD's after that), the KP would more likely be on
the sand flats on the west side of the bar at that time. Hence, with high tide
being around 4.30 - 5.30pm on Saturday and Sunday, late afternoon may give the
best opportunity to see the bird on the ocean side. However, it may be there
earlier as suggested by Rohan if there is not too much disturbance.
I hope that this is of interest.
Cheers
Roger McGovern
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