LONG REEF is the best place on Sydney’s Northern Beaches for a migratory shorebird encounter. It’s a brilliantly fascinating and vibrant intertidal, ecological hotspot: a real nature lover magnet! So it’s not unusual to find me stalking about the reef with scope and bins and magnifying glass, as I was yesterday, during a brief break [...]
THERE’S STACKS of bird books on the market these days. Some highly technical, some basically informative and some are just good old fashioned coffee table celebrations. Every now and again one shows up which combines all of these elements and when it is full of images taken by one of the world’s great avian photographers [...]
On April 25, the Long Reef shorebird counting team conducted the first post migration count on the reef. Data collected elsewhere in Australia indicated that there had been failed breeding in 2008 by a number of shorebirds which breed in the high Arctic, including Bar-tailed Godwits (the race Menzbieri, which visit the west coast of [...]
It’s been a pretty big couple of weeks for me. My trip to Roebuck Bay delivered a bunch of rarities and rare vagrants, including a second Australian record. You always expect a rarity or two when you visit the Broome region – its situation in the broader geography and the structure of the vegetation and [...]
I’ve just returned to Sydney from my mozzie dome in the campground of Broome Bird Observatory, on the shores of Roebuck Bay, North Western Australia. During my time in Broome I witnessed tens of thousands of shorebirds preparing for their annual migratory journeys to Asia and, for many, well within the Arctic Circle on Northern [...]
MOST GROUPS or genera within the Sandpiper family have the remarkable ability to “see” what is beneath the mud or sand where they seek out the invertebrate prey (macrobenthic organisms) which lives there. Of course they don’t use their eyes for this task, they have a highly sensitive bill tip which helps them feel their [...]
IT WAS AN EXCITING TIME for me at Boat Harbour yesterday. The morning (low tide) survey was amazing, with tens of thousands of shearwaters moving in massive flocks on the horizon, large flocks of Kelp Gulls (well for me anyway – dozen at a time) and plenty of shorebird activity. It appears that our Little [...]
Whilst out on my weekly shorebird survey of Boat Harbour yesterday I dropped into nearby Quibray Bay. This is a favourite place of mine when I wish to surround myself with my favourite species, the Bar-tailed Godwit. I was not disappointed, with a foraging flock of around 170 birds working the sandy shore and mud [...]
WE’VE ALL WATCHED those nature doco’s where the large predator (generally a large cat, wolf or shark) takes its prey and immediately understand that an animal which didn’t measure up was taken. Perhaps it was not fit enough in some way. Perhaps it was young and dumb. Perhaps it was old and feeble. Whatever traits the prey [...]
The Great Knots did the right thing today and made an encore visit to Boat Harbour – and I had my camera this time. They spent most of the time I was there, around an hour, foraging. The tern diversity was excellent on the reef today, with plenty of Crested Terns, Little Terns (breeding, non-breeding, juvs and immatures), Common [...]
WITHIN THE NEXT SIX WEEKS all of the Pacific Golden Plover and most of the Red-necked Stints, Ruddy Turnstone and Grey-tailed Tattlers on Long Reef will have commenced their migration. We are now into the time of the year when we can expect to see breeding plumage appear and the waders putting on weight as [...]
To quote the great Edward O Wilson, biologist, entomologist, theorist, naturalist and author: “The totality of life, known as the biosphere to scientists . . . is a membrane of organisms wrapped around the Earth so thin it cannot be seen edgewise from a space shuttle, yet so internally complex that most species composing it [...]
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