Local photographer breaks Australian record with fairy tern images

A photo she took of a fairy tern near the beach on Breakwater Parade in 2016 was identified by the band on its leg as being more than two decades old – the oldest known fairy tern in the country.

Ms Corker has been taking pictures of birds around Mandurah since 2014 when she got involved with the Fairy Tern Conservation Group, but it was two years later when she set the bar for the Australian record.

“[The group] asked me for some photos for a video they were making to raise awareness about fairy terns,” Ms Corker said.

“I saw a group of fairy terns at Breakwater Parade on a building block because that was their nesting site before the marina was built and now their options for finding a place to nest had reduced a lot.

“I started going down there in the mornings and sitting down on the edge of the block, photographing them as they were scraping nests and laying eggs and so on.”

Ms Corker could never have guessed her photos would become so important, when she captured one with an unusual marking on its leg.

“I spotted a bird with a band on its leg and I told researcher Dr Nic Dunlop and he said he was very interested so I thought I would try and a closer photograph of the band,” she said.

“Over a few days I managed to get photographs of the band from different angles and we were able to read the number on the band.

“When Nic went through his records, and he had to go back to his pre-computer days, he found that he had banded that bird in 1997 at Tern Island in Rockingham.”

As if her contribution to Australian fairy tern research wasn’t already enough, Ms Corker then went on to photograph another banded bird, which was also found to be 20 years old.

“[Nic] sent the numbers off to the Bird and Banding scheme headquarters in Canberra and they verified them,” she said.

“They were banded in January of 1997 but had hatched out the year before so were 20 years old.

“I was very excited, everyone was very excited because it was the oldest record they had of an Australian fairy tern and then we got another one so we had two record holders at one point.”

Then, in 2018, Ms Corker broke her own record after coincidentally photographing the exact same two birds as they returned to the shore in Mandurah.

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“I managed to get them both again in 2018 and the age record was raised to 22 years for the species,” she said.

“I believe I was the first person in WA to have helped identify a band by the use of photography, rather than the bird being recaptured or found deceased.

“I feel privileged to be able to act as a ‘citizen scientist’ and add to the knowledge of the fairy tern’s behaviour and hopefully help to protect this very vulnerable species.”

To find out more about the Fairy Tern Conservation Group, follow them on Facebook.