“I’m waiting

Waiting for the tide to turn

Patience, patience, patience

Is one sure thing that I’ve learned”

By

Robert Cray, Mike Vannice and Dennis Walker

 

My last birding outing in Broome was to Town Beach – a whopping 5 minutes walk from where we were staying. It was the evening before we were due to leave Broome and I wanted to get some photos of the migratory shorebirds that are found in Broome at this time of year.

 

The tide was out and a long way to boot. Ideally I’d want the tide to be coming in as it would push all the birds closer to me. A receding tide would take them away from me. So the question was how to get close to the birds while avoiding the liquid mud that was between us. The obvious answer was the jetty as it extends 112m out from the shoreline. The only problem was that it is very high to account for Broome’s 10m+ tides. Then I noticed some kids playing on what appeared to be a lower level and watching them carefully I saw how they were accessing this level and I quickly took up position. Most of the birds were still a long way out – well over 500m. After watching for a while I saw that there were a few different species of bird that were closer to me, but even so I’d need to fit my 1.4 x teleconverter to my 100-400mm lens. Not ideal because of the hit on image quality and having a maximum aperture of f9 forcing the use of high ISOs and lower shutter speeds. 

 

There were quite a few different species out on the mud. There was an Eastern Reef Egret and a Little Heron poking around amongst some rocks for something to eat. A Whimbrel stayed for ages going back and forth. Every now and again a little flock of assorted birds – Rudy Turnstones, Terek Sandpipers, Greater Sand-plovers and Grey-tailed Tattlers – would land and have a bit of a feed then something would spook them and they’d all take off again. It was brilliant and time just flew past. All too soon the sun was starting to dip below the horizon and the light levels were too low to continue photographing. All in all it was an excellent end to an excellent trip.

 

The title for this blog entry comes from the song by the great Robert Cray.