I could only choose one of the two weekend days for morning birding, and I had chosen Sunday. So I had a much-needed lie-in this morning. Checking the alerts around lunchtime, I saw that the amazing Michael Daley had seen a bunch of Red Knots at the Manly foreshore near Dreveson Park on the morning low tide. I decided to head there late afternoon with the family to check the foreshore on the falling tide – the kids could play on the playground while I was birding. When we arrived about 16:20 the tide wasn’t as far out as I thought it would be, so it was quite a while before enough intertidal was exposed to attract the shorebirds off the roost. Although I saw hundreds of Grey-tailed Tattlers I couldn’t find the mixed flock of shorebirds that Michael had described. Eventually I doubled back and found the  flock at Penfold Place, but by now it was getting dark and it was too late to find the knots. It was irritating to miss them like this, but I really shouldn’t worry about it – there is generally a nice southward passage of red knots through Moreton Bay in September.

When I got home I checked the eBird alert again and saw that the inimitable Ged Tranter had found a Black Falcon at Tinchi Tamba, an incredible repeat of the bird he’d seen at Kedron on Feb 26th. The Tinchi bird had reappeared three times during the day today, and it later emerged that it had flown over Dowse Lagoon earlier in the morning. I had to go for this, so I resolved to try Tinchi in the morning, possibly looking for Little Grassbird at dawn, and then heading onto the peninsula / wader roost later in the morning. I had to back home for about 10am, so I wouldn’t have all that long.

With no year ticks today, my year list remained on 256 species. I spent 1 hours 8 minutes birding, walked 1.564 km and drove 10.2 km (I counted half of the kilometres since it was also a family outing).