A hot day on the beach......

Part of a group of 4 Red Necked Stints on the beach at Kamiiso this afternoon.

It was a hot hot day yesterday and the sun was usually behind the birds making them look very pale.........

When they stand around in the flotsam they are very well camouflaged.........

The holiday period has just ended and the beach was pretty empty allowing me to stalk the Stints in peace...........

One of the birds was still showing the last remnants of its summer plumage.

 

I tried to get some shots of running waders but almost all were out of focus............these were the best of a bad bunch.

The wader season is one of my favourite events of the birding calendar. 28 years ago at the end of August I made my first trip up the Ribble and got Dunlin, Ringed Plover, Curlew, Green Sandpiper and I've always been fascinated by them.

 

The only other wader species around was Common Sandpiper. There were several immature Night Herons around as well as this one which looked a bit different..........

A heavy crop and a crappy record shot of an immature Striated Heron, a local tick (#196) although I have seen them just outside town before.

Not much else about, an Osprey kept me entertained but yet again didn't come close enough for a decent shot.

On the river near my flat Eastern Crowned Warblers have started passing through again and as the vegetation thins slightly I noticed the first Night Heron since June.........

I watched the Liverpool game, not a bad result I suppose but I used some fairly choice language when Reina dropped the ball in the back of the net.

Thanks for clicking this link.

The construction work next to our apartment building still hasn't finished. That's 12 weeks now. They were cutting tiles the last couple of days (why they have to do this on site I just don't know) and also cutting and digging up the car park, the noise is just endless.....................at least I can escape to a beach and gently harass shorebirds to forget about it for a while every now and then.