Hi, further to yesterday’s Roseate Tern posting:
I have had a few enquiries about finding the bird, and I wasn’t encouraging, as terns come and go from sandbanks during the day, and a drive to Noosa could be fruitless if the bird is out to sea feeding.
However, I have reconsidered. Yesterday it happened that terns were feeding just behind the breakers on the north shore. Mullet are heading out of the estuary to spawn, and they are feeding on pilchards close to shore. The terns were having a field day yesterday feeding on chomped pilchards. At the time I thought that they were probably all Cresteds, but the light was bad with sun high in the north, and later I saw inside the estuary that there were also Commons and a few Littles. I can’t say where they are feeding at present – but perhaps with the Cresteds.
So, perhaps there is a better than usual chance of a resighting, if you have time to watch and wait. There is another tern in my photos, and I am not sure of its id. It’s not in focus. But the legs are bright red. It’s not the Roseate we saw yesterday.
There is no point in trying to id the Roseate from the southern riverbank, nomatter how good your optics may be. You will need to go across the river on the barge, around to the north shore, following the gravel Wallaby Track to the beach, and walking down to the north spit. There is a big, deep boghole along the track, and I wouldn’t attempt it in a standard, low-slung 2WD. We were in a Subaru Forester, and even then, whilst getting through OK both ways, we bottomed the edge of the boghole. In a decent 4WD you can go onto the beach and down to the bollards where traffic stops and turns around.
At the moment the tide is in neap phase, and so even at high tide we were able to walk across from the north spit to the sandbanks (west of it) where the terns happened to roost yesterday.
But finding a tern is not as easy as finding a Hooded Plover.
Good luck. I’ll be doing a shorebird and tern survey in Noosa on Thursday afternoon, and if we see it, I’ll report to the list.
Good luck,
Jill
