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| White-rumped Sandpiper, the bird that said we just HAD to go on the twitch |
On Monday 5th of January two postings on the local birding
site got all the local twitchers edgy. A White-rumped Sandpiper had been seen
on a beach near Shoalhaven, south of Sydney and a South Island Pied
Oystercatcher (SIPO) had been seen on a beach near Coff's Harbour, North of
Sydney. The oystercatcher is from New Zealand and they turn up in Australia
with some regularity.
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| South Island Pied Oystercatcher |
The sandpiper is a different case altogether. It breeds in
the arctic and then flies down the west coast of Canada and the USA to spend
the northern winter in the south of South America. Somehow this bird got mixed
with the wrong flock, or got her/his directions mixed, or maybe just wanted to
go exploring. Whichever, he/she ended up in Australia instead of South America.
Because there have only been a few, maybe 6 or 7, White-rumped Sandpipers found
in Australia the twitcher network went crazy.
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| Joy's photo of me peering down the beach. We found the SIPO at the far end |
Joy and I read the postings, called Barb, and the "game
was afoot"*. The earliest we could leave was Saturday so it was a long
week hoping that both birds would hang around. I watched the twitching sites
for reports of the sandpiper daily, well, no, hourly actually, well, OK, every 5 or ten minutes.
People were driving in, flying in, organising groups to go carpooling. People
started posting photos of the sandpiper and giving updates. Then it disappeared
from the beach it had been found on! aaargh, we would miss seeing it. Then it
was re-found at a Little Tern nesting colony beside a lake south of Shoalhaven,
aaah, there was still hope.
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| Inside our 20th century plane. |
We booked a loop trip; Melbourne to Coff's Harbour via
Sydney, Shoalhaven via Sydney and then back to Melb. We rendezvoused at Joy's
on Friday night and left for the airport at 0400 Saturday morning. The flight
to Sydney was by your standard 21st C jet but Sydney to Coff's was
in a quaint old thing with a high wing and propellers. This would have been OK
but when I looked out the window there was this huge spinning blade, and I
immediately had images of a James Bond scenario where the blade would break
loose and come scything through the plane, right about where I was sitting.
When we came to land the wheels came down and the whole plane shook and
shuddered, it was all just so last century (smile).
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| The view from my seat |
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| It looked much more romantic once we were in the air |
All went well though and by 1100 we were standing on the
beach south of Coff's Harbour looking for the SIPO. The day was warm, as it
always is in central New South Wales but there was a very strong northerly
blowing right down the beach. We started staggering into the wind as sea spray
and flying sand blasted into our faces. The spot we were aiming for was 3 km up
the beach and we so hoped that the bird was hiding somewhere closer.
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| The SIPO in a cloud of sand |
I set up the scope and peered up the beach into the sand
storm. Nothing. A kilometre further north and I tried again. Still nothing. We
kept walking and finally saw a small black dot. I set the scope up and through
the fog of sand I could see three bird-sized black dots. Yes!! it was starting
to look good. After a bit more walking I tried the scope again and .... two of
the dots were driftwood but one was a bird, an oystercatcher. But was it an
Australian oystercatcher or a New Zealand one?
We got closer and took a few photos and it looked good for
the SIPO. We then moved closer again and up to the top of the beach by the
bushes so we were less visible. The sand blasted us and the bird turned and
looked at us. It then took off and flew for maybe 50 metres up the beach and we
got a good view of the open wing. All the marks were good for SIPO. Yes!! Tick
one for the trip.
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| It was Barb's 750th Australian species so she was particularly pleased |
On Sunday morning we were on the 0600 flight out of Coff's
heading for Shoalhaven via Sydney, well actually Culburra Beach and Lake
Wollumboula, just south of Shoalhaven. The departure lounge at Coff's was as
much fun as the flight in the little plane had been. We walked in and there it
was, the Biggles coffee shop. This wasn't just 20th C, it was early
20th C. I loved it. We walked out to the plane and up the stairs and
the door closed. I was sure I then heard a call from the cockpit, "chocks
away Algy", but maybe not. One excellent thing though was that we flew so
low I got nice photos of Tucker Rocks and Bundagen Headland where we had seen
the SIPO.
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| Bundagen Headland. We walked 3 km along the beach to the right |
After driving from Sydney in heavy rain and fog we arrived
at the sandpiper lake at about 1100 and the experience was very different to
the SIPO experience. As we got out of the car a birder was loading his scope
into the boot of his car. "Hi" we said, "is the bird still
here". No need to name the bird, there was only one that birders wanted to
see. "Yes", he said, "there's a group watching it now". We
walked for about a kilometre in a light drizzle of rain but thankfully not much wind, and there
were the people, and there was "the bird". I set the scope up,
pointed it at a bird huddled behind a bit of seaweed and, Tick Two. The MEGA
was in the bag.
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| WRSP with Red-necked Stints |
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| WRSP and Little Tern |
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| WRSP and Lesser Sand Plover |
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| WRSP |
The rain stopped and shafts of sunlight lit the black clouds
and grey lake. We chatted to people as they came and went. We took hundreds of
photos. We chatted to more people. We took more photos of the other waders at
the lake. Without a doubt there was a greater variety of small wader species
than I had seen in many years; there were Broad-billed Sandpipers, Sharp-tailed
Sandpipers, Curlew Sandpipers, Red-knots, Lesser Sand Plovers and Red-necked Stints. The thrill of seeing this bird, rare to Australia, held
us and the others on the beach despite the showers of rain that drifted
through.
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| Lesser (Mongolian) Sand Plover |
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| The beach and Little Tern nesting area |
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| Little Terns |
The Little Terns had almost finished nesting inside their
fenced-off reserve but they and the Crested Terns were still around in big
numbers.
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| Little Terns inside their fenced off nesting area |
We finally drifted off to clean up at our motel and head to
a little cafe for a late lunch. The Ten Thousand Tastebuds Cafe is only small
but it had the best food and is well worth going to if you are in town looking
for "the bird". Best of all, they knew about the sandpiper and didn't
think we were totally strange as we sat there eating sandwiches and raving
about a non-descript little brown bird that had somehow got lost and flown half
way round the world, the wrong way.
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| Red Knot |
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| Broad-billed Sandpipers |
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| Broad-billed Sandpipers and Red-necked Stint |
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| Red Knots and Red-necked Sandpipers |
In just two days of frantic travelling and birding we had
ticked off two new birds, seen a lot of NSW birds that we don't get around
Melbourne, met a bunch of wonderful people and had a really fun time. What a
gorgeous way to spend a weekend.
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| Red-necked Stints |
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| Water Dragon, just to show that we look at things other than birds (smile) |
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| Water dragon |
*With
apologies to the bard and King Henry V, or Sherlock Holmes, and modified to
suit (smile)
All
text and images © Jenny Spry
