Hi all,
I was to have done the summer count of all inner Pumicestone Passage roosts on Monday with Moreton Bay Regional Council officers. Before we got to any roosts the boat broke down, and I found myself unexpectedly rescuing my council mates. Roost counts abandoned. For the next two days one or other of us was unavailable. Then we found out that there were no drivers available for the rest of the week. So I called on my mates in Sunshine Coast Council to help us out with a boat and driver. Thanks to them, this is planned for Friday, and we hope the weather is kind enough to let us get out there.
One roost, deep behind mangroves in Glass Mountain Creek, takes a lot of time to access, and can be tricky on the lower tides. So I decided to cut it from our boat trip this Friday, and to drive through the forestry to get in on foot today.
Bingo! I really hit paydirt. 300 Eastern Curlew. Let me tell you why this surprises me. Some years ago for about 3 years I used to do a passage roost run by boat with Rob King. We stumbled on the Glass Mtn Ck claypan one exploratory day, and all I could recall later was that there were ‘some curlews’ in there. When David Milton and I later undertook to map all the roosts in MBRC area, I conducted a few trips in there to try to find the roost through deep mangrove forests, but all I could come up with was a few Whimbrel, and not in the same place. But time had made my memory a bit foggy. Nevertheless I mapped it because I had a gut feeling that this was worth watching.
Today I trudged through the thick black sludge of the claypan, seeing no waders, mentally writing my ‘nil’ QWSG form as I walked. I was close to the end of the section I regarded as worthwhile for waders, when I heard the cry of Eastern Curlew. It would have been exactly at the high tide (BB1.8M) at that moment. I ran like mad to hide behind a mangrove as they approached. They wheeled several times and gave me the opportunity to keep estimating their number. Then about 200 peeled off and headed downstream and (I think) dropped in to another claypan nearby, where I have never been. The other hundred dropped down to the exact place where I had seen them many years ago. I crept up on them, and to my shame, I was unsuccessful in keeping them on the ground whilst I counted them properly. They were too smart for me. Up they went to join the others across the creek. They were really skittish.
My interpretation of this is that the roost is possibly most useful in wet years. For years it has been mostly dry, but this season this roost is a real mud slush of a place. The claypan was covered in water even on so paltry a tide, no doubt from recent rains. So I think that in wet years we should expect or hope to find curlews using it. And my faith in myself is right up there for persisting!
And I just wanted to share my delight with you. It isn’t every day you stumble across 300 Eastern Curlew you don’t expect.
Cheers,
Jill
Hi All,
Peter’s mention of persistence struck a chord with me, for I have another story to tell you about Eastern Curlews.
On Monday, unable to do the passage survey, I went to the Kakadu Beach roost with a friend, and on the high tide there were about 2,500 Bartail Godwits and a few dozen Great Knot. A few others, but not migratory waders. Anyway, that’s not the point.
I called another friend, Trevor Ford, to say there were heaps of birds roosting at Kakadu on the high, and he came around to have a look. Then we all went on to the old Dux Creek roost (now obliterated and a development called Pacific Harbour) and there we found almost 300 Eastern Curlews. Not necessarily the same Eastern Curlews I found yesterday at Glass Mountain Creek, as there is a bit of distance between the sites.
And now I get to my long-winded point (sorry). Kakadu Beach roost was artificially created to compensate for the destruction of the old Dux Creek roost. Before its destruction, Trevor used to count up to 1,000 Eastern Curlews on the high tide. The Eastern Curlews use the new roost (Kakadu) now and then, but definitely prefer the old site. I really mean this old Dux Creek roost has been obliterated. Instead of erstwhile intertidal mud, the Eastern Curlews now roost quite comfortably on mown grass which has been transported in to make the new marina look nice. Talk about persistence! And site fidelity!
Also on this construction site of many years duration were more than a hundred Lesser Sand Plovers, some Golden Plovers, a couple of hundred Bartailed Godwits, but none of them was roosting on the mown grass with the curlews. Trevor Ford goes in to both roosts regularly to monitor the situation.
I should add that Trevor, and Trevor only, has permission from the developers to enter the building site where the old roost was. No one should go in there without permission.
Amazing example of site fidelity.
Cheers,
Jill
Jill Dening Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia
26° 51′ 41″S 152° 56′ 00″E
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Hi Jill, That’s just amazing — almost better than Roebuck Bay
By anyone’s standards, this is a remarkable observation, and a bird that there are some fears about.
A great one for the Shorebirds records. Persistence pays.
Cheers Peter