The second day at Anna Plains arrives and after an early breakfast we are out on site and set 2 nets for another attempt at catching. After setting the nets every one departs the catching area apart from those who are in the hide. Once at an un-disturbing distance we scan through any waders nearby looking for any flag / colour ringed individuals. Yesterday I managed to see my first new species of wader of the trip in the form of a Red capped Plover (above) but today managed to get a better photo. These are very KP like apart from lacking the pale collar and breast patches of KP.
The catch goes well and after extracting the birds from the net we move to our temporary ringing station that has been set up where the birds and the team are kept cool in the shade whilst processing the birds from the catch (photo above and below)
Several Red necked Stints were in the catch today and above shows Kim with a red necked Stint and below shows a close up. Kim is a cool person, Australian based and found Australia's first record of Hoopoe at Broome this winter.
Greater Sandplovers featured heavy in this catch and I was fortunate enough to be on the Greater Sandplover processing team today. Above shows a breeding plumaged Greater Sandplover and below shows a non breeding plumaged adult Mongolian Plover. The markings on the flanks of the Mongolian Plover below that are visible here were mentioned as a feature that M. Garner & I. Lewington used in their Mongolian & Lesser Sandplover article in Birding World 2003.
Above shows you the area of sand-flats at todays location and below shows the sky above turning dark as a storm approaches at the end of the afternoon just as we had packed up and were returning to base. No Australian Hobby this evening.
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