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!