ML344457891
Contributor
Date
Location
- Age
- Not specified
- Sex
- Not specified
Observation details
***Uncommon, high count, and getting pretty late so this was quite incredible. It’s been a hard year for finding these guys so this was a nice treat. Been visiting the Landing beach on and off for around a month. Didn’t expect to see these guys today. I came down towards the beach and noticed a profuse amount of GBHE (a total of 14 were on the shore!!) and as I slowly rounded the bend towards the flats, four GBHE flew and the gills followed en-suite. I immediately heard a higher pitched noise coming from the flying gulls and noticed five birds small and pale birds with rapid, agile, and bouncy flight mixing with the common species. I first thought terns but realized too many features were wrongs. My next guess was BOGU and I was happily correct, as five BOGUs (immature/female type) came to the flats. They remained for awhile before something spooked all the gulls and the five took to the sky. Of the five, two returned, while the other birds flew out and started diving in the middle of the river. In the process of watching the birds in the middle of the river, I noticed that seven more (!!!) had joined them. They must have been loading on the water or on the other side of river and decided to join the three that had just moved towards them. These birds seemed to proceed North. Eventually three more birds joined the two that had remained, getting back to the original number of five. No sooner had they returned that all five once again got spooked and left. These birds headed South but soon one returned. After about 20 minutes, the four birds that had left returned from the South as a group of six. When I left, seven birds were on the flats but with high tide rising, I knew they would fly off soon. Of the 17 (minimum count) seen, only one was an adult bird (most were in first winter plumage). Many photos
Technical information
- Model
- NIKON D3500
- ISO
- 560
- Focal length
- 600 mm
- Flash
- Flash did not fire
- f-stop
- f/6.3
- Shutter speed
- 1/4000 sec
- Dimensions
- 3318 pixels x 2212 pixels
- Original file size
- 2.27 MB