Double-banded Plover, Collared Kingfisher

So today I braved a tsunami to go birding. Ok, sure, that's a slightly creative take on what actually happened, but there was a tsunami alert for the coastal areas, and Rob and I were heading out to go wader watching anyway, so technically its true. The tide for the day was already planned to be massively high (by Brisbane standards anyway, around 2.6m without the "tsunami's" assistance), and the flocks of waders on the coast were huge as they sought refuge where they could above the tide mark. Rob and I managed to find a particularly good group of birds, the largest I have ever seen outside of the Port of Brisbane (which is not publicly accessible). All up there must have been well over 5000 birds. We were mainly looking for Asian Dowitcher, a very rare bird locally and one I don't really expect to get for the year. Sadly, today I was right, with nothing presenting itself. We did have a small flock of Black-tailed Godwits in amongst the thousands of Bar-tailed Godwits, and a pair of Grey Plovers were also good for the site. The stars of the show, however, were the birds in breeding plumage. By early March, many of the migratory shorebirds are ready to start migrating, and one of the first things we noticed on arrival at the site was the Greater and Lesser Sand Plovers in stunning breeding plumage. As the day progressed we saw Pacific Golden Plover and Curlew Sandpipers in partial breeding plumage, and a couple of Bar-tailed Godwits resplendent in their blood-red plumage. After spending an hour going through each bird at the site carefully, we finally admitted there probably wasn't anything rare at the site. Having made this admission, I promptly found a Double-banded Plover (#287) in non-breeding plumage, just to prove me wrong. Now these birds aren't really that rare in Brisbane, it's just that right now they are meant to all be in New Zealand. I'm not sure whether this was a very very early non-breeding arrival from NZ, or a bird that decided to stay in Aus instead of migrating home (how unlike a Kiwi!), but either way it was a big surprise to see one in February.

Moving on from the wader watching, we headed to the boardwalk at Wynnum to try for Collared Kingfisher (#288) - a bird I had missed to now. We spent a bemusing ten minutes looking around the area without hearing any, before first hearing a pair by the track on our way out, and then seeing one right at the exit before leaving. We also stopped by Fuller's Oval to see if we could luck onto something rare, but the wetland is so full there was no chance. Still, two new species for the day was most welcome, and seeing the high tide and the huge flocks of waders was great too. I didn't take my camera out to the wader roost due to the intensely muddy conditions, so photos shown are from other areas we visited.

Total species to date: 288

Photo 1: Juvenile Dollarbird, Fullers Oval
Photo 2: Brahminy Kite, Wynnum