A bird’s eye view of the Shoal Bay KBA
Aerial survey of shorebirds in Shoal Bay KBA in the Northern Territory
By Amanda Lilleyman
In February 2023, I was lucky enough to join the Larrakia Land and Sea Rangers in Darwin/Garramilla for a survey of shorebirds in the Harbour and also in the Shoal Bay KBA. This is an area where we have done shorebird surveys by boat, on-foot, and by helicopter in the past.
The Larrakia Land and Sea Rangers work on Larrakia/Gulumoerrgin Country doing weed management, shorebird surveys, marine megafauna surveys, water quality testing, wildlife rescue, marine debris removal, and other land and sea management. They recently received funding from the Northern Territory Aboriginal Ranger Grants Program (which is a fund of money from the Inpex Ichthys offset program) to conduct biodiversity monitoring work in Darwin Harbour, including aerial surveys of shorebirds and marine megafauna.
This kind of work is important for rangers to have eyes on the harbour for long-term biodiversity monitoring across Larrakia Country.
The Shoal Bay KBA is an area of 9,589 ha big and covers the coastal zone from Lee Point beach to Buffalo Creek (Casuarina Coastal Reserve, Buffalo Creek Management Area), Howard Plains (Shoal Bay Coastal Reserve), the mouth of the Howard River, and then to the northern boundary of the Tree Point Conservation Area. It is an area made up of mostly muddy and sandy coast with mangroves fringing the saltmarsh and plains. The area supports more than 1% of the world’s population of the critically endangered Great Knot (Calidris tenuiroistris), a species that has been declining mostly due to habitat destruction in the East Asian-Australasian Flyway where it stops during its epic migration of over 20,000 km each year.
Great Knots in flight. Photo credit: Amanda Lilleyman
The Shoal Bay KBA borders the Robertson Barracks military area, and there is tourism and recreational use of the coastal areas where these shorebirds are found. Along the Gunn Point and Tree Point beaches, there is frequent use of the coastal area for camping, 4WDing, fishing, and hunting. Recreational disturbance of shorebirds is high within the Shoal Bay KBA. In recent years, the area was also proposed for a prawn farm hatchery, and there are future plans for housing and agriculture in the nearby inland region.
During the aerial survey of the Shoal Bay KBA, we counted thousands of shorebirds along the Lee Point and Buffalo Creek beach (we flew high enough up that we did not disturb the birds), and we counted other species along the mangrove edges and in the saltpans, including the critically endangered Far Eastern Curlew (Numenius madagascariensis), Common Greenshank (Tringa nebularia), Radjah Shelduck (Radjah radjah), Black-winged Stilt (Himantopus himantopus), Silver Gull (Larus novahollandiae), Crested Tern (Thalasseus bergii), and more.
If you visit the Shoal Bay KBA coastal area, you are likely to see Silver Gulls, Greater Sand Plovers, Crested Terns, Great Knots, Red-capped Plovers, Far Eastern Curlews, Ruddy Turnstone, and many other coastal birds.
The top 30 birds you are likely to see in the Shoal Bay KBA, from Birdata, with reporting rate included.
Top 30 birds recorded at the Shoal Bay KBA, sorted by reporting rate.