Ready to Migrate

Well, the very heavy rain has stopped! My yard has dried enough for me to get the lawn mower over it but there is still lots of water lying in low places along the roads. I can just imagine how wet some of the walking trails are! There are still short sharp rain showers every day which is enough to keep the water levels up. Of course heat plus water equals mosquitoes - and lots of them! It is still not good weather for kayaking as there have been strong winds every day and I am just not into extreme effort in kayaking! So to see shorebirds up close it was off out to Inskip again in the early morning.
Rainbow Beach is about half way to Inskip from where I live. This was the view from Rainbow Beach.  Looking south towards Double Island Point it was very hazy so I decided to bring the trees into sharp focus and leave the rest showing the haze.

Looking north towards Fraser Island the sea was very rough and the force of the recent weather showed in the high sand cliffs at the edge of the water and the piles of broken trees and branches that littered what beach was left.

I had checked the weather reports before I left home but out at Inskip Point the wind was far higher than I expected. I had trouble standing still and even though I was using a monopod for my camera a lot of photos were blurred from the wind gusts. There was lots of sea foam washing over the point and dropped there with every wave that washed and then receded. There were a variety of shorebirds but the Bar-tailed Godwits were especially interesting. They looked ready for migration and will be leaving over the next few days and weeks. They fly directly to the Yellow Sea area between China and Korea. Then they rest and eat for a month or 6 weeks and then do another long flight to Alaska where they breed. 
Both of the Godwits in the next photo are showing how fat they get before they start migrating. The male has the dark red plumage but the female is still showing very little color. (Males are slightly smaller than the females and their bill is slightly shorter.)

This female Godwit is showing more color - and very intent on preening each feather into place. Look at the contortions necessary to preen everywhere with that long bill!

On the north side of the Point there is a small lip of sand which drops down to the water. There were numbers of Godwits feeding in the softer sand as each wave came in and then retreated.The drifts of foam were all along the water's edge.

Most of the time they timed the waves perfectly and scurried out of reach of the bigger ones. Sometimes however it was necessary to use their wings to fly/hop out of reach.

Then it was back down to the water's edge to feed between waves.

For more photos from around the world visit Our World Tuesday

and for more bird photos visit Wild Bird Wednesday.