Tuesday, July 6, 2010

My Best Birding Trip

A few days ago Duncan over at Ben Cruachan urged us all to join in the 'I and the Bird' blog carnival and write about our best birding trip - ever! Of course I read 'I and the Bird' but I don't always read the forward notices - so thanks Duncan for the reminder. (btw Duncan has written a really great post - so go over and read it.)
My best birding trip was just 37kms from home but I saw the most amazing bird spectacle that I have ever seen. At that time I wrote about it - but that was before I started this blog so I have never posted about it here.
I drove over to Inskip Point which (for the benefit of readers outside Australia) is the closest southern point on the mainland to Fraser Island in Queensland. This map is from Google Earth with the area marked on it. This was my report of that trip:
"One of nature's marvels" is how an experienced bird watcher described the scene.
It was Monday March 3 2008 and we had gone to Inskip Point to observe and count terns flying into the estuary at dusk to their roosting site. About two weeks before, we had counted just over 400 terns coming in. What a surprise awaited us!
There were clouds of terns flying in like a river in flood! If I had been by myself, I would have been overwhelmed by the numbers. However, I had experienced birders Jill Dening and Barb Dickson with me who have studied and counted terns for years. They watched, and counted and estimated at least 30,000 terns flying in to roost!
It was an amazing sight! Terns feed out at sea during the day but must come in to land at night to roost. Their preferred roosting sites are sand banks in an estuary mouth, and they fly in just before dark.Most of the terns were migratory terns that breed during the northern hemisphere summer and over-winter in Australia (it being the Australian summer). The three species of migratory terns that come here are the Common Tern (Sterna hirundo), Little Tern (Sterna albifrons) and White-winged Black Tern (Chlidonias leucopterus). The most numerous are the Common Terns. All three of these species are listed in bilateral conservation treaties. They are also protected by the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. Mixed in with these terns were also large numbers of Crested Terns (Sterna bergii) that are resident in Australia. Crested Terns are so noisy! They constantly call to each other and their call is a squawk!
These photos were all taken that evening. Click on a photo to enlarge it.Update: We counted again on March 11 2008 and there were only about 10,000 terns that evening. In the time since then we have never again found those huge numbers. We think that evening we must have seen large flocks all migrating north at the same time. There is still too little research being done, and too few observations and counts being collected to give answers with any certainty. Tern counts must be done in the late afternoon and into the evening until the light fails. Unfortunately it has not been possible to make regular tern counts at this site. It is still on my list of things I would like to organize in the future!

12 comments:

  1. Hi Andrew - definitely Wow! And you can see why I count it as my best birding trip.

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  2. Those numbers are amazing Mick.
    Gouldiae.

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  3. Hi Gouldiae, Yes, hardly believable unless you were there to see it. Lucky I had such experienced Tern watchers with me. They have counted terns for years and had similar huge numbers down at Caloundra a few years ago.

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  4. I don't know what has been happening here but comments keep disappearing - and then appearing again - now one from Andrew has disappeared again! Does anyone have any ideas about what has been happening?

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  5. Hi Mick: Two comments are listed on my blog, but neither has shown up and comments box comes up blank. Dashboard no help.

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  6. Thanks Tony - so it's not just my blog. Hope blogger fixes it all soon.

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  7. Wow! That's ALOT of birds. Must have been spectacular.

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  8. Hi Halcyon, it definitely was spectacular.

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  9. A memorable and spectacular event. I have often watched 30,000+ Geese come into roost in the winter but that many Terns would be just awesome.

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  10. Hi Frank, it's hard for me to imagine that many geese since we never see them in those numbers here. I have seen photos of great numbers of geese out west when the rains come and they are breeding - but certainly not here. I wonder how noisy they are in great numbers!

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  11. Very, very noisy Mick but in a good way. 60,000+ Pink-footed are logged around the north Norfolk coast in winter.

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