Memorable Moments of 2008

Duncan over at Ben Cruachan tagged me for a meme about “your ten most memorable nature moments of 2008”. It's taken me a while to get to this – sorry! - but here they are – not in order of importance but as they happened during the year. Since I did not start posting here until May last year not all these have been written up on my blog. (In an aside I want to say how much fun I am having with this blog because of the other nature bloggers who have been generous in sharing their knowledge and comments here.)
So here we go – my 10 most memorable nature moments of 2008:

1. Finding a pair of Beach Stone-curlews that had taken up residence on the sand island in the Noosa River that council had recently protected from access during the summer months.
2. Introducing some friends to the delights of watching shorebirds from a kayak – the results have been an enormous amount of shorebird and seabird information that has passed between us because of the greater access by kayaks. (“Nature Moments” are so much more fun when they are shared!)
3. Seeing 30,000 terns coming in to roost in the evening at Inskip Point. This was an amazing sight and we will be looking to follow it up when the terns again start migrating northwards.
4. Seeing and photographing Sanderlings and Grey Plovers for the first time – also at Inskip.
5. Seeing White-winged Black Terns in almost full breeding color for the first time.
From here on is where I started blogging – all posted this year.
6. Seeing and photographing Bush Stone Curlew at the local golf club.
7. Photographing Striated Pardalotes at Esk and discovering their nest hole in the retaining fence.
8. Seeing and photographing a family of Tawny Frogmouths
9. Finding Pied Oystercatchers with juveniles – the first time in five years that I have seen this on the bay around here.
10. Seeing and hearing Ground Parrots in the National Park.

So that's it from me and I think I now have to tag another two people! Denis at Nature of Robertson have you been tagged? I reckon you'd have some great moments! And how about Neil at Out and About in Cooloola .