Kakadu Beach bird roost report: 25 May 2025 - Influx of Little Black Cormorants

I certainly had no inkling of what the bird count had in store for me prior to the astonishing event that occurred today at the roost.  A beautiful calm day with the water like a silver coated millpond and dozens of fishing boats in the Passage.  I had just finished the count and was looking at a orange leg flag on a Caspian Tern when my telescope darkened and the sky was filled with hundreds and hundreds of Little Black Cormorants, coming from the east in wave after wave, landing on the beach and swimming off shore in the water until the beach was jam packed with an estimated 2800 birds.  They were moving so quickly it was impossible to count but fortunately, Win and Paul both took excellent photos and I managed some – gob-smacked at the spectacle – on my phone, which allowed me to make an educated guestimate, although probably very conservative. The dozen or so boats  fishing just offshore must have been equally amazed as masses of black feathered figures hurtled low across the water to the roost. The sea was boiling with swimming birds, landing and taking off in dense waves.  And silent, not a sound from them except the noise of wings and water.  Some unfortunate fifty or so Far Eastern Curlews who had been enjoying the peace and incoming tide took off in alarm.  The cormorants were feeding on a shoal of baitfish that had come too close to the beach, but hundreds settled along the roost and up onto the sand, briefly drying their gleaming black wings (cormorants lack the oil in the their feathers which most seabirds have) in the sunshine before plunging back into the water or taking to flight further along the coast.  A large flock of 66 pelicans flew in and landed as well, using the turmoiled frenzy in the water to snatch at fish brought to the surface by the seething mass of diving cormorants.  Fifteen minutes later, they had moved on and the roost was almost deserted: the cormorants and pelicans in a great rolling motion flew and swam past Banksia Beach and up towards White Patch.  Here the baitfish must have turned into deeper water, because I could see small flocks - 10 to 20 or so - of Little Black Cormorants slowly flighting back over Toorbul towards Beachmere.

With approximately  3055 birds on the roost, this must be one of the biggest bird totals we have ever recorded.  The timing was so quick that it was hard to believe what I had just seen. Extraordinary spectacle.

Thanks to Paul and Win for some photos attached.  I hope Paul’s video link below can be opened.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/Xz5B2KBqypa9f4QT9

Kakadu Beach bird roost 13 April 2025

Photo courtesy of Win Bartholomai

ASE (with green leg flag) our champion flyer who was banded in 2013 and would have flown to Alaska at least 12 times. This conservatively is about 13,500 km one way, meaning that ASE has flown at least 324,000 km during her life. From Earth to the Moon is 384,000 km, so ASE weighing about 350 gm, has probably flown this distance if we allow for storms and winds pushing her off course. If she was banded as an adult then it is likely ASE has already reached this target.

Kakadu Beach roost was strangely quiet this morning after all the crowded excitement of the summer season.  The majority of our godwits, knots, curlews and sand-plovers are gone for the winter, travelling far to the north to disperse to their spring breeding grounds in Siberia, Alaska and beyond the Arctic Circle.  By now they are probably crossing the Equator, heading out over the Philippine Sea and up towards China and the Yellow Sea between Korea and China.  It seems that they tend to stop en route to feed and keep their body fat weight up, unlike the return nonstop flight back across the Pacific (for our godwits at least!).  I had time this morning to muse on whether these birds are able to remember previous flights and talk among each other about what drives them to make this incredible and dangerous journey every year.  What is the instinct that finally says to them… its time to go?  And they lift off, and instead of making a short flight across to Toorbul or the mudflats up the Pumicestone Passage, this time its for real and they turn north along the great expanse of the Queensland to foreign shores and the uncertainties of the breeding season.  I wonder if ASE will make it back again for a 16th time? 

There were still a few birds on the roost – 3 Far Eastern Curlew looking as if they had missed the train, a lone Eurasian Whimbrel and our resident birds, 64 Pied Stilts in their gleaming white and navy blue plumage and long red legs, a single Beach Stone-curlew almost smiling smugly at the quietness of the roost at last, and four spunky and adorable little Red-capped Plovers.  However I think I spotted about 20 Bar-tailed Godwits over at Toorbul so not everything has left.

Getting the seaward warning signs back up on the water’s edge is critically important before people think it is OK to come and use the beach.  For birds, Kakadu Beach is like an aerodrome and possibly clearly identified in their memories as a safe place to stop over.  If we can preserve this little stretch of beach as human populations impact, then it will mean there is a safe place for the flocks when they return at the end of our winter. And this year, avian flu pathogens are devastating northern populations and we just have to hope that our shorebird long-distance flyers don’t catch it from mixing with local populations as they get ready to breed and then on the return flight.

It would be so useful to have a discussion about the roost in this quiet time to see how we can make it more useful for the public and safer for the birds. Just as the birds are recognising KBBR is a safe place to roost, so international birdwatchers are making the journey to see one of the great avian spectacles on the east coast.

I will still be counting at high tides through the winter because the empty time-spaces are important to record on a long-term scientific understanding of how climate change or weather events or human interference can change the dynamics very quickly. 

Kakadu Beach Bird Roost report: 30 March 2025

Quite a lot of news today!

After the very heavy rain of yesterday I wondered what might be on the roost this morning and whether our shorebirds had left – they are usually gone by the end of March.  However, the king tide had brought one of the largest numbers counted this year – 2434.  And almost all were in breeding plumage ready for that inspiring flight north, the male godwits looking handsome with their chestnut plumage while the longer-billed females were plump and ready to go to the Alaskan tundra. Terry Burgess recorded some Red Knots this week, but I couldn't find any in the huge mass of birds crowding up on the higher parts of the roost as the tide came in. The hide was equally crowded as well and I was able to talk to lots of people about the amazing flights our shorebirds make and the biology of the simple existence between high and low tides and the exotic countries they would have to fly over en route to northern climes.  

Because the godwits spread along the roost and I had some help from generous folk in the hide I was able to collect some 38 leg flags, including our amazing ASE, the girl who has flown over 255,000 km since being banded in 2013.  She was fat and contented, lolling on the water’s edge in the safety of our Australian autumn.  I fervently hope she makes it safely north and back again next September.

Unfortunately, a jet ski pulled in the southern end and many birds reluctantly took flight – they are trying to save as much energy and fat reserves as possible. However, our trusty MBRC rangers serendipitously happened to be on site and immediately warned them off.  We are really missing the seaward warning signs that we have been trying to get replaced after they were vandalized, because they do give a greater protection from boaties and jet skis who otherwise see the beach as a convenient place to land.  Thanks to Paul Cuddihy, we discovered this week that Google Maps has been advertising Kakadu Beach roost as a good place to walk!  I wonder when that got put up?

Last week I witnessed a most extraordinary sight, when you wish for a camera.  A large Pied Cormorant swimming just off the roost caught a metre long sea snake, probably an Olive-headed sea snake Hydrophis major, which grows over a metre long and found in Moreton Bay waters. The bird was trying to swallow it, but the snake wrapped itself around the bird’s neck.  The cormorant dived several times but sea snakes can stay underwater for up to two hours,  so this didn’t work.  At length it managed to get the snake’s head throatwards and with a mighty effort swallowed it.   Ten minutes later, it caught another much smaller sea snake, which suggests they are reasonably common in the Passage.

Darren Jew also sent an extraordinary photo taken off Woorim on Friday of a massed flock of terns (see attached photo).  I thought initially most of them were Little Terns, but from another photo they turned (no pun please) out to be predominantly Common Terns – around 4800 of them!   I was able to get a rough count on my computer.  This is amazing because we used to get Commons (actually they are quite uncommon) at Kakadu Beach many years ago but now they are quite unusual visitors.  Some 240 Great Crested Terns and a possible Sooty Tern were also in the mix.  It just shows what can use our beaches when dogs are on leashes and people are inside sheltering from the rain!

Photo courtesy of Darren Jew

Photo courtesy of Darren Jew