Shorebirds around Darwin

Living in Central Australia can make identifying birds from elsewhere take a lot longer than identifying the local birds where I live and normally travel. However, there are a few montys in there that are pretty difficult to mistake, even if I try my hardest to make up ridiculous scenarios where a bird has a deformed beak etc.

So, here are a few of the ones I saw recently on a trip to Darwin. Please feel free to correct me if I have the ID wrong via a comment below:

Eastern Curlew

Another bird I seem to be able to recognise fairly easily even though I see it rarely has a family connection:

Ruddy Turnstone

and one bird I seemed to get better at identifying was the Whimbrel

 

There was one that caused me a lot of grief, and even when I thought I had it pegged I was still wrong.

I thought the below bird was more likely to be a Caspian Plover rather than a Greater Sand Plover. I looked really hard for ID features and eventually "missed the crucial one" - the beak - oh well, we live and learn. Thank you to all who assisted me correctly identify the below bird via Twitter, Facebook and this blog:

Greater Sand Plover\

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The next two probably are more residents than the type that come from long distances each year. They both stalk in a hunched position and really are quite funny to watch, but very efficient. I watched a Eastern Reef Egret do a bizarre dance, flapping and squatting until I realised it was actually getting a small school of baitfish into a nice confined area and then had a decent feed, still weird to watch though

Eastern Reef Egret - Dark Morph (saw the White morph in the same location)

Striated Heron

there will be more from the Darwin trip, but for now hope you enjoy the above.