4th April 2011: Kapar - Knots, Tereks and Turnstones

It's not too difficult to tell Great and Red Knots apart at this time of year! In non-breeding plumage, they are more similar though. Red Knots are smaller, have shorter, straighter bills and shorter, blacker legs.



In flight, Great Knots have cleaner, whiter underwings and a whiter rump.



Not that you can see it in these pictures!



A Great Knot incoming.



Mostly Greats here (I can see two Red, bottom left).



Two Great and two Red Knots in a small flock of Bar-tailed Godwits and a Whimbrel.



Can you find a Red Knot in this pic? (Check the rumps!).



The only half decent pic I got of some of the male Ruddy Turnstones - very bright! The Red Knot behind must be the 'piersmai' race. I think we also get the duller 'rogersi' but these are harder to distinguish.









A few Terek Sandpiper shots. In flight, Terek has a slightly Redshank-like white trailing edge to the wing. However, the lack of leg projection beyond the tail give them a very different shape.

21 March 2011 (morning): Kapar Power Station, Selangor

Well, here's a challenge! How to distill 950 photos into a readable blog post?! Perhaps the answer is to break it up into sections - so here goes!

My last visit to Kapar was 31 Jan 2010 - over a year ago! I was determined not to let another spring passage go by without spending some time at my favourite place, so I booked in for two days at the end of March, and another 2 at the beginning of April, which seems to be the best time to catch birds in numbers and in their best spring finery.

A 5-hour drive from Penang gave me just enough time to scout out the place in the late afternoon the previous day. The large ashpond was largely dry and devoid of birds, except for a large but rather distant roost of 3,700 Eurasian Curlews, 4 Eastern Curlews,1,230 Gull-billed Terns and 29 Caspians. The smaller ashpond, by contrast, was absolutely full of birds, and I spent some time planning where to site my hide the following morning. Then it was off to a nearby hotel for an early night, praying for a golden sunrise!

I was back on site by 5am. The birds are much more tolerant of approach in the dark, so I was able to set up my hide and get in without the birds flying. They simply walked away a bit, and then returned within half an hour or so. There followed a long, mosquito-bitten 2-hr wait for the daylight!



A couple of shots taken in the glow of the security lights. The alert bird in the centre facing left is a Common Greenshank and the one sleeping to its left is a Nordmann's!



A Grey Heron (right) dwarfs the waders.

The morning high tide brings in fewer birds to this particular site than the afternoon one for some reason, but there are still a LOT of birds!





















































A few of the 2,500 Bar-tailed Godwits!



A couple of Asian Dowitchers appeared momentarily in the crowd.






















There were 700 or so Whimbrel.



Ruddy Turnstones were dotted about here and there, but the males in really red plumage kept their distance, so I had to make do with this duller individual.



Marsh Sandpipers look stunning at this time of year.



There were about 400 of them!



Spot the odd one out. You should be able to find a Common Greenshank in this flock!



One of the incredible variety of breeding-plumaged Common Redshanks - only 500 of them today.

By 9 o'clock the birds started to leave as the tide was falling, so it was time for me to pack up as well, for some breakfast and a sleep!

Waders: The rest

Here are the rest of the wader shots from my Australia trip.



A Grey-tailed Tattler at Long Reef.






















A shot showing the nasal groove.



A juvenile in flight. The underwing coverts of Wandering are supposed to be darker than Grey-tailed, according to Brazil's Birds of East Asia. I would guess that's a pretty difficult thing to judge in the field!



Seeing waders roosting on a rock platform was a pleasant change from sandbars and and prawn ponds!





Some of these Red-necked Stints had very prominent 'split supercilia'.



A first winter still with some juvenile scapulars.





Birds started feeding in rock pools as the tide went down.



An adult 'PGP'.







Ruddy Turnstones - widespread, seldom numerous, always smart!







The two species of oystercatcher - Sooty and Pied, the latter a heavily colour-ringed bird on Phillip Island.

25th December 2009: Olhos De Agua, the Algarve, Portugal

It was a different Christmas! We had booked lunch at a Chinese Restaurant in town, but as a good many of us were down with some kind of sickness, only a reduced crowd attended. After lunch a walk along the beach was in order to try to walk off some of those calories!







Some Great Cormorants sleeping off their Christmas lunch!



I don't normally photograph this species, but as it looked relatively wild and in its natural habitat, I snapped this Rock Dove/Feral Pigeon on a sea stack. Whether the Algarve has a relict population of wild birds I know not, but it looked good!





More Ruddy Turnstones.





A Whimbrel fly-past and another sitting on the cliffs, not a place you normally expect to see one.



Doughnut in the sky over Albufeira harbour.