I happened to be on Bribie Island yesterday morning for a rather high
tide. There was very little happening at Buckleys Hole and the
combined wader/tern flock assembled on the Bongaree Spit steadfastly
refused to move up to area where I was waiting [Interestingly, they
were happy to sit in the water and tolerated swimmers and boaties
moving close by.]
I moved up to the Kakadu Beach roost and found a large combined flock
of barwits, black-tails and knots [possibly as many as 1000 birds].
There were a trio of birders there and one was counting the birds -
not overly easy, as they were packed in along the bar and periodically
took to flight. [I got some nice flight shots of the black-tails].
I called in to the Toorbul wader roost - initially, there was just a
flock of ~20 OzPOs there. I noticed an immature with an orange bill
and so learned another aspect that is not described in the field
guides. I was just about to go when the waders arrived from Bribie at
a great rate of knots, and got some better photos as the birds were
much closer. [The enjoyable thing about BTGWs is that they look a bit
like hutwits, so you can have some fun checking them]. A smaller flock
had settled just up the beach and included a scattering of ~ 50
Eastern Curlews. Interestingly, I saw virtually no small waders at
either Bribie or Toorbul.
Today I joined the Queensland Wader Study Group in a survey of a large
restricted area. [I had never been on an official wader count before]
The assembled birders signed in and then divided into groups to
undertake counts at different parts of the location. At each site,
each counter would nominate which species they would count and then
(after a period) report the figure to the group scribe. There were
thousands of birds to be counted, so the process took a couple of
hours. I was surprised at the number of Little Terns present - I
think there would have been ~500 spread around the area [they made a
large cloud when they were took to the air].
The highlight for the twitchers in the group were 5 Broad-billed
Sandpipers - first spotted by Chris Sanderson. The moral of this
story, is that if you want to get into some off-limits areas to look
for unusual birds, you could do worse than to join a wader study group
on an official count.
Regards, Laurie.
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