Behind the Lens: American Airlines

Australia has some of the most beautiful birds in the world, and whilst bird photographers love photographing or viewing our native species, there is one type of bird that really gets us excited – a vagrant species.

What is a vagrant you ask? To put it simply, it is something that turns up where it should not have.

Recently, in Brisbane, a vagrant shorebird decided to take a detour and stopover. The Hudsonian Godwit breeds in the Sub-arctic and then migrates to the bottom of South America annually, travelling 15,000km.

The Hudsonian Godwit is one of many special migratory shorebirds that take flights like this all around the world every year, so to turn up in Queensland was an unusual detour.

Shorebird photography is quite difficult. Firstly, shorebirds feed and rest on open mudflats which means the photographer has nowhere to hide.

Secondly, the birds have spent several weeks flying non-stop, so when they arrive, they need to rest and feed as they lose a lot of body weight. Additional stress and making them fly off repeatedly means they often won’t stand still for long either.

For this shot, I needed the tide times to be right. Most migratory shorebirds use different locations depending on incoming and outgoing tides where the tides reveal mudflats to feed or roost on. I also needed afternoon sunlight so the bird would be illuminated well.

This combination left me with just a few days over a two-week period to get the image. Vagrant species like this could turn up for one day and leave, or spend several weeks or months before returning to their home country, so I didn’t have much time.

The other issue I couldn’t control was people on the beach and off-leash dogs. I arrived an hour before optimum tide times and scanned the beach with binoculars to pick the bird out.

Unfortunately, it was flushed multiple times by dogs and beachgoers and by the time it settled it was around 1.5km down the beach.

At this point, the sun had about 45 minutes before it disappeared, so time was of the essence. This particular bird was about 50m from the shore, and I started slowly moving closer.

When I was about 25 metres away, I got down onto my belly and began the arduous task of crawling towards the birds whilst not losing my camera gear in the water and mud.

Every few metres I would take a few frames and move closer until the bird was filling the frame how I liked. Crawling does not spook the birds as much as being upright.

At this time the bird was feeding, so the images I was producing were of a bird standing on the muddy water. As much as I would have been happy to call it a day, out of the corner of my eye I started seeing the flock of birds lift off. I kept my trigger finger ready and locked onto the bird as it sprung into the air and flew off with the flock.

I was unsure what happened until I looked up and saw a White-bellied Sea Eagle had just flown over the group and startled them. The birds gone, I looked down at my camera and reviewed the images. A big grin took over my face as I took my bedraggled self up the beach, realising what I had captured and farewelling a bird I may never see in Australia again.