Beach Stone-curlew at Marlo (Victoria)

Hi birders, On Saturday, prior to my incident with the quicksand, Ruth and I paid a visit to Marlo in eastern Gippsland, Victoria to look for, and hopefully photograph, the vagrant Beach Stone-curlew that has been reported there recently. Thanks to help from local birder Len Axen (who, I think it can safely be said, knows all the birds on his local patch), we managed to find the bird in roughly the area it was previously seen – at Frenches Narrows, opposite Mots Beach. We initially located the bird by scanning the far side of the Narrows from a lookout about 100m east of the Mots Beach carpark. We found the bird sheltering under a bush almost directly opposite Mots Beach. Once we were sure we could identify the location, we headed back to the beach itself and managed a few photos from across the Narrows. Len had told us that it was possible to wade across the water at low tide, unfortunately it was now high tide (around 12:30pm). We decided to attempt the crossing anyway, so after sending Ruth out for a test wade, we loaded ourselves up with our gear and waded across. The water reached about thigh deep in the middle, and then became progressively shallower as we neared the far shore. Surprisingly, the bird was very accommodating, allowing us within about 20m – I say surprisingly, because most other people have reported that it is skittish or flighty, maybe it simply wasn’t expecting anyone to come from out of the water? The bird only moved away once we broke the 20m “barrier”, and even then it simply walked away from us. I have posted my photos from the visit to my website: http://paul.angrybluecat.com/Trips-and-Locations/2014/Marlo-Mar-2014 Paul Dodd Docklands, Victoria _______________________________________________ Birding-Aus mailing list Birding-Aus@birding-aus.org To change settings or unsubscribe visit: http://birding-aus.org/mailman/listinfo/birding-aus_birding-aus.org