Today I’ve borrowed another batch of bird photos (with permission) from Aussie biologist Scott Ritchie, a great photographer whose Facebook page is here. Scott’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them. Scott hails from Cairns.
I got up at six, heard light rain, made a coffee and checked the radar. There was quite a massive rain shower headed towards Cairns from the north. Anyway, I decided to take my time and just see how it panned out. There was a break after the big initial rain band, with rain ending around 8 to 830. My plan was to go to Redden Island and just concentrate on shorebirds because it was sort of dark outside. And I was trying out my 200 to 800 lens with the 1.4X teleconverter (max mag at 1120!). When I left, I saw that there was a new band of rain forming to our north. Bummer! I probably had about an hour hour and a half tops to get my birds.
And I did have fun with a couple of Pied Oystercatchers showing how they got their name. The little Red-capped Plover and the Greater Sand-Plover also put on a pretty good show. And I got a couple of terns in flight. It was fun to run into the gang just before the next rain band hit. Cheers and I hope you enjoy them.
Pied Oystercatcher [Haematopus longirostris] finds a succulent clam:
He keeps trying while his mate keeps a hopeful eye.:
At last it’s coming free:
He washes the sand off the meat:
And down the hatch:
That was yummy!:
A Greater Sand-Plover [Anarhynchus leschenaultii] loosens up:
Shakes it loose:
And goes for a run on the beach!:
Caspian Tern [Hydroprogne caspia]:
Hovers looking for fish:
Red-capped plover [Anarhynchus ruficapillus]:
Doing his yoga stretches:
Crested Terns [Thalasseus bergii], Black-naped Terns (small ones; Sterna sumatrana). Please confirm the IDs!:
I’m really glad you decided to go out in spite of the rain! All the photos are wonderful, but especially those of the plovers, including the one going for a stroll.
Such charming pictures! Thank you for sharing these!
Nice!
These are wonderful photos. I like the Pied Oystercatcher washing the sand off the clam.
Thanks!
Always love the new dinosaur pics at WEIT.
Thank you,
D.A.
NYC
Very nice photos, especially the oystercatcher sequence. Yes, pretty sure those tern IDs are correct – I saw crested terns in French Polynesia last year; don’t really know black-naped terns, but one turned up in New Zealand (where I live) in February 2022 just before I was due to do a trip up to the Kermadec Islands (the trip was cancelled two weeks before departure owing to the Russian-owned boat being caught up in sanctions over the Ukrainian war – curse you Vladimir Putin!), so I’d familiarised myself with the species in case there were any more around.
There were oystercatchers in the lagoon off the back porch of the charming little red & white cottage ~1hr N of Bergen with one corner in Lurefjord that was in service as a molecular biology laboratory (with lodging in the attic) on my last field biology expedition. (We were on a hunt for Periphylla jellyfish.) Norwegian for oystercatcher is tjeld. At least, I ID’d them as tjelds from a bird book in the place, and had to wait to get online back in Bergen to find out what English for tjeld was.