Port of Brisbane shorebird count: Sanderling

Another photo-less blog entry, because I managed to get in a shorebird count at the Port of Brisbane before work. Normally I would have expected a new bird to be something like Red Knot, which I fully expect to turn up at some point this year. I confess I was really hoping for a Dowitcher, but that bird has probably flown for this half of the year. I'll have to wait til October to try for both these species again. However, among the beautiful breeding plumaged Pacific Golden Plovers and Sand Plovers, I managed to spot one bird I really didn't think I'd get this year: a Sanderling. These birds are highly uncommon in SEQ for two reasons - one, they are only here in very small numbers, and two, their habitat is open oceanic beaches, which are both hard to get to, and mostly fairly flogged by pedestrian and vehicle traffic in the region. Meaning actually tracking down a Sanderling here is a non-trivial task. Finding one at random in a place that has been surveyed for 20 years is, apparently, a better way to go. In fact, my bird was only the second record ever for the site. Fortunately I wasn't the only birder to get a look at the bird, which was being spectacularly difficult by walking through complex terrain and staying hundreds of metres away. After a morning of fleeting glimpses and frustrating views, we finally managed to see it in the open and get a good look at the bird, or at least good enough to see how much paler and larger it was than the surrounding stints, which was enough for a positive ID.

So anyway, I was pretty amazed to see one, and even more relieved to have another of the unlikely birds for the year ticked off. One step closer to 350!

Total birds to date: 306