A few bird photos

 This is for the benefit of followers of this blog who are also in  the Mallacoota Birds Facebook Group, where the snaps originally appeared.

I wondered if there might be a bonus Knot (Red or Great, either would have done) visible from Captain Stevenson's Point on the morning of 10 June. Nope.

My gast was however flabbered by a flock of 8 Caspian Terns on a wee sandbar.

I usually only see 1 or 2 at once (occasionally 3). There is an eBird record of 15 of this species on the Goodwin Sands in November 2020, with breeding behaviour (Feeding Young) noted. The biggest count in eBird for East Gippsland (note, not just the Mallacoota District) is 40 birds recorded in January 2020 on a 5km survey of Lake Tyers Beach. The distribution of #birds per survey shows the prevalence of counts of 1 or 2.

I wondered where the Crested Terns were and found 58 of them (plus one White-fronted) on the sandbar indicated by yellow arrows. I then looked up a tad and found the bunch with red arrow, conservatively estimated at about 150.

Then my oozle was bambed by finding a Sacred Kingfisher!

What on earth is one of them doing in Mallacoota at this time of year? EBird has one previous June record for East Gippsland but none for July.