The walk from Five Fingers Reef, through Coral Bay, to the headland north of Shark Lagoon is about 15km but well worth the effort, with turquoise seas and fine white sand beaches at the base of large sand dunes, the scenery is just stunning. Terns dominate here and during our stay I managed to see seven different species of tern of varying shapes and sizes as you can see from this photo!
And here's four species for a start, Capsian, crested, lesser crested and roseate terns.
Lesser crested tern was a new species for me and I saw about 80 today. Considerably smaller than crested tern, they also have an orange bill rather than the greenish bill of their larger cousin.
Crested tern and lesser crested tern.
Lesser crested and roseate terns. I have seen roseate terns in Australia before but never in such numbers.
A brown noddy was in amongst the roosting terns. The only other place I have seen this species is Michaelmas Cay on the Great Barrier Reef. Also today there was a bridled tern.
Mainly roseate terns.
Mainly roseate and lesser crested terns, however if you look closely you can pick out a white-winged black tern.
White-winged black tern near the left in this photo.
White-winged black tern.
Roseate, lesser crested and white-winged black tern. There were about six white-winged black terns on the beach. This is a species which I saw previously during my time at Werribee near Melbourne last year, when they were in amongst the huge flocks of whiskered terns.
Impressive numbers of roseate terns.
There were a handful of waders on the beach, including one of my favourites, red-capped plover.
Sanderling
Greater sand plover.
Grey-tailed tattler. Other waders today included great knot and common sandpiper.
Coral Bay
Shark Lagoon.
Reef sharks at Coral Bay.
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