Vik's Gallery:   Lesser Yellowlegs (1/4)

CHARADRIIFORMES: Scolopacidae

Tringa flavipes  

On a drive from Brisbane to Melbourne, I chose the coast road to provide an opportunity to visit Jerseyville and possibly see the Lesser Yellowlegs, a common bird in parts of North America but a rare vagrant to Australia, and of which a single bird has been reported for the second consecutive summer at the Boyters Lane Wetlands here.

I arrived at dusk on a night that promised to be very wet. After scanning the wetlands in the gloom from one end of Boyters Lane to the other, a distance of some two kilometers, and with moisture already falling I felt my chances of finding this single bird in the morning were not good.

I drove on to South West Rocks where I picked up a meal of fish and chips and then parked at the front of the historic Trial Bay Gaol ruins to eat it and be entertained by the frequent lightning flashes illuminating dramatic views through the windscreen of a rain-lashed sea-scape with the outline of the gaol ruins looming to my left.

Later I parked off a quiet road and alternately slept and listened to the rain on the car roof.

The next morning, the sky was overcast but the rain had stopped. On the east side of Boyters Lane there was a building which looked like a bird hide beside a lagoon.

I stepped over a padlocked chain across a gateway and quietly walked the 50 meters to the building which identified itself by means of a poster at the door as a bird hide built by a local community organisation using hardwood from a milking shed demolished nearby, and the body of water before it as Teal Lagoon. This was as good a place to start my search as anywhere.

Birds roosting in the trees in the lagoon began to leave as the day lightened.

From the hide I saw Sharp-tailed Sandpipers and a couple of Buff-banded Rails feeding near the edge of the lagoon. A few Chestnut Teal became active and then I saw a single bird like a Marsh Sandpiper but with bright yellow legs and a darker breast wading in the shallow water. Could this be the Lesser Yellowlegs? It was.

The light wasn't good but I managed to get a couple of photographs before it flew off.

I saw it again briefly twice more during the three hours that I spent at the hide and Teal Lagoon, and then it was time to continue the journey to Melbourne.