Wildlife Art by Australian Artist Peter Brown.

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Low Tide Explorations

When Sandi and I make our annual pilgrimage to the Cape Range National Park and set up camp just fifty metres from the water's edge, it is the day's tidal movements which dictate the timetable for our activites. Although the tidal variation along the Ningaloo coast isn't as great as it is further north, it's still significant enough to expose a large area of shallow reef twice each day close to our camp near Yardie Creek. Sandi and I are not the only ones interested in the reef at low tide and a wide variety of bird species converge there for an easy feed.

When it comes to photographing birds on the reef, we've found that the best approach is not to approach at all! Instead, we've had greater success when we choose a spot in the birds' general vicinity, sit on a convenient rock and wait for them to make their way to us as they feed. They seem less perturbed by our presence when we are stationary and they are approaching us, and we've been able to take better photographs since adopting this strategy.

I enjoy watching eastern reef egrets foraging in the rock pools and I'm intrigued and amused by the method they use to catch small fish and crustaceans. Standing on the pool's edge, they slowly extend one leg, then move it rapidly to and fro in the water to flush out their prey. Time and time again I saw how effective this technique can be as an egret repeated this move before darting forward to seize a fish or crab that had been fooled into leaving its shelter.

Red-capped plovers are attractive little birds and foraged busily around us, seemingly oblivious to our presence. We were surprised to see what appeared to be a bird of a different species accompanying them as they marched purposefully from rock pool to rock pool, but found later that they were juveniles which lack the distinctive red cap giving the species their name.

Other than a frustratingly camera-shy sacred kingfisher which teased us from a distance, it was the pied oyster catchers and sooty oyster catchers which seemed reluctant to share their patch of reef with us. They would make their way toward us as we readied our cameras, only to take flight and leapfrog far enough ahead of us that useful photographs of them feeding were impossible. I did get lucky as they relocated yet again, and took the photograph above as they flew past us.

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