Happy Boxing Day to all... Myself & very good birding friend Adam Arnold, this
morning had the pleasure of finding a single Oriental Plover at the local turf
farm in Edmonton, approx 15kms south of Cairns. As far as turf farms go, this
one is very small & probably only covers an area of about 15-20 acres, if that.
We had gone there to have a look at the lone Oriental Pratincole discovered
there on 24/12 by another local mate, Dom Chaplin. Sure enough as soon as we
found our plover, we then noticed the prat very closeby. The prat took off
twice, but after cicling the area each time, it then landed very near to where
it was originally - & this was always very close to the lone plover. The plover
did not fly at all in the 90 mins we were there, but we did check it for the
very rare vagrant Caspian Plover, which it wasn't... Only 50 mtrs from these
two birds, we had just earlier seen the lone Little Curlew that had been
hanging here for the last couple of weeks. So that's 3 gre
at records all at once at the one small site this morning....!! All 3 species
are quite unommon visitors to the Cairns coastal plain - only one or 2 Little
Curlews are reported up here & usually only every other year; Oriental
Pratincoles would be considered very rare visitors here (I've only had one
other personal record myself in the Cairns area some years ago of a single
bird); Oriental Plovers used to be seen at the now closed (but much bigger)
turf farm that was at Warners Rd a few kms away, but they were only ever
semi-regular there & only in very small numbers. Today's discovery is I think
probably the first at the new & much smaller farm, which has been operational
for only 6 or 7 years, from memory. The plover used to be recorded more
regularly to the south at Innisfail & even moreso towards Townsville, but
around Cairns they have been very scarce of late. They can usually be more
easily seen further north on Cape York Pen & at Cooktown airport & other
airstrips on
the cape like Aurukun, Weipa, Coen, Iron Range, Musgrave, etc etc If anyone
else has records up here around Cairns of Oriental Pratincole, or at the new
turf farm of Oriental Plover, I will be very interested to hear of them. I have
several average images of the prat & plover if anyone wants to see them, but
they are all distant shots. Cheers for now, Martin Cachard, Cairns, 0428 782 808
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