A tour of Kelly's Swamp

Having a little time on hand today, and fairly desperately needing a "Bird of the Day" (BoD) I took myself to Kelly's Swamp in Jerrabomberra Wetlands to see what was around.

The first point of interest was that the long grass that was growing all over the place has disappeared.  I am not sure if this is because the Rangers have wielded a lawn mower in the area - I'd have paid money to watch that, especially getting the Victa over the channels - or grazing pressure.
I have been  advised:
 ... also did the shingle island last week – combination of hand pulling and brushcutter and taking material off by boat. We have a Green Army team (joint with Mulligans) – great help for these types of jobs – more hands means less time doing the jobs out in Kellys and therefore less disturbance time.
Well done that team: it made the birds easier to see, especially the 25 Purple Swamphens feeding in the area.

A Pink-eared Duck was sheltering in the reeds on the far side of the denuded area.
The main area of the swamp was rather light on birds.  A couple more Pink-eared Ducks and about 8 Australasian Shovelers were the notable observations.

So I moved on to the loop through the old school grounds, meeting and having a good conversation with another birder there who demonstrated what good eyesight was like,  As a result of his bare-eyed spotting things I could barely pick up with binoculars I ended with a good crop of raptors: Brown Goshawk, Collared Sparrowhawk, Black-shouldered Kite, Whistling Kite and Little Eagle (2).  The final species there became BoD, narrowly beating off Golden-headed Cisticola.

Moving on to the bank around the Silt Tarp I noticed the pleasant 'aniseed' smell of fennel.  Many other weeds seem to have been removed but this one is still going strong.
 A lone Straw-necked Ibis was walking along the levee.
 Tis is the nice new boardwalk through the reedbeds.  OK, there are no boards, but as it performs the function of a boardwalk I am not going to quibble
 Getting round to Fulica Hide a White-faced heron flew in to see what it could find.
 I was intrigued about the white on its bill.  It isn't a normal feature!  Is this a sign of damage to the skewering device or has it just been probing something white?  Suggestions welcome.
 I finished off my walk going past the new hide being constructed.
Theer has been a lot of chat on the Chatline about what it might be called with suggestions coming under three headings:
  • A genus name (matches the other hides);
  • A common name (makes things simple for non-birders);
  • A name honouring an eminent birder with links to the Swamp.
This chaos has led one member to suggest calling it the "Hide with no Name" which appeals to me but is unlikely to be received well by the very serious, and humourless, people wearing suits who will make the decision.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A tour of the West (part 1)

Image
A friend from my time in the UN sent me some photos of her family trip along Route 66.  They did this is a large camperwagon rather than a Chevy Corvette (apparently the kids jacked up about being offered a trip in the trunk).  It seems to have been a very good trip for them and most interesting to see their photos.  It was also educational for me, as I found out the German for rocking chair (schaukelstuhl, since you ask). They did 7200 miles in 30 days - a pretty serious bit of distance. This made me think of the trips we did in 1981 when living in Denver.  Frances initiated that idea by getting a book about the National Parks of the West  and marking interesting places.  I then worked out a route on a Rand-McNally Road Atlas (GPS was unknown then  - as were iPhones, personal computers and the internet).  From memory, taking nearly the whole Summer school holidays we covered about 10,000 miles in 70 days.  Here, approximately,  are our routes: That map comes from Google Maps (G
Read more

Insects from pine trees

Image
This afternoon (13/1/2015) we were looking out of our sunroom and noticed a strange bit of mist.  On getting my binoculars on the case I found it to be a cloud of tens of thousand of insects.  They appeared with naked eye to be flying away, but with binoculars I thought they were circling. Here are some images In the second one it may be possible to see there are two streams coming from the top of each tree. There was a loud buzzing noise but that could just be several thousand wings. Earlier in the day Frances had been to some nearby willows and they were infested with many little black soft bodied insects.  Perhaps they shifted to the pines and were swarming? Help!! Any information welcome. A colleague, from Wamboin, had noticed a similat phenomenon, but involvng eucalypts rather than pines!  Here are the photos he took with his phone. I have consulted some expert friends.   Their responses were: I would have gone for chironomids. I recall years ago driving al
Read more

Maslins beach rules

Image
Anyone who was in Adelaide in the 1970s will be having a good nudge nudge at that title.  However the beach is really nice even though it is the haunt (in Summer ) of naked people.  (As an aside one of the 'van park staff was talking to some other guests and commented that the sights on the beach in Summer were not at all exciting.)  In April it is the haunt of seniors, many of them exercising their dogs, and thus a far more attractive place. Getting to the beach was a walk of about 1km along roads, from our van.  The second half of this went past a rather daggy looking paddock with many formed ridges in it, as though it was irrigated, although a water sources wasn't evident.  The paddock got interesting towards the end as some green parrots appeared.  Thanks to Frances eye for detail we have subsequently identified these as Elegant Parrots: my first lifer for 2014.    The locale is indicated by the red lines in this mudmap: Here are the birds: The view from the top of
Read more