Oriental Plover, Oriental Pratincole, Littlle Curlew all on one small patch in Edmontan TNQ at the same time

Happy Boxing Day to all… Myself & very good birding friend Adam Arnold, this morning had the pleasure of finding a single Oriental Plover at the local turf farm in Edmonton, approx 15kms south of Cairns. As far as turf farms go, this one is very small & probably only covers an area of about 15-20 acres, if that. We had gone there to have a look at the lone Oriental Pratincole discovered there on 24/12 by another local mate, Dom Chaplin. Sure enough as soon as we found our plover, we then noticed the prat very closeby. The prat took off twice, but after cicling the area each time, it then landed very near to where it was originally – & this was always very close to the lone plover. The plover did not fly at all in the 90 mins we were there, but we did check it for the very rare vagrant Caspian Plover, which it wasn’t… Only 50 mtrs from these two birds, we had just earlier seen the lone Little Curlew that had been hanging here for the last couple of weeks. So that’s 3 gre at records all at once at the one small site this morning….!! All 3 species are quite unommon visitors to the Cairns coastal plain – only one or 2 Little Curlews are reported up here & usually only every other year; Oriental Pratincoles would be considered very rare visitors here (I’ve only had one other personal record myself in the Cairns area some years ago of a single bird); Oriental Plovers used to be seen at the now closed (but much bigger) turf farm that was at Warners Rd a few kms away, but they were only ever semi-regular there & only in very small numbers. Today’s discovery is I think probably the first at the new & much smaller farm, which has been operational for only 6 or 7 years, from memory. The plover used to be recorded more regularly to the south at Innisfail & even moreso towards Townsville, but around Cairns they have been very scarce of late. They can usually be more easily seen further north on Cape York Pen & at Cooktown airport & other airstrips on the cape like Aurukun, Weipa, Coen, Iron Range, Musgrave, etc etc If anyone else has records up here around Cairns of Oriental Pratincole, or at the new turf farm of Oriental Plover, I will be very interested to hear of them. I have several average images of the prat & plover if anyone wants to see them, but they are all distant shots. Cheers for now, Martin Cachard, Cairns, 0428 782 808

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