Autumn = Gang-gangs

This afternoon I went to the Hoskinstown Plain to try to find an Australasian Pipit for my BirdaDay entry.  On getting to Briars-Sharrow Rd the elm trees were looking very Autumnal.
Given the number of frosts down there, and the level of wind for the last two weeks I am astoished there is a leaf left on the trees,

At the NE end of the road I noticed that a hawthorn tree was pretty much leaf challenged, but very Gang-gang Cockatoo enhanced.
 As the light wasn't that special I have put in green splodges to emphasise the positions of the 8 birds.  It looked to me as though there were 3 adult males, 3 adult females and 2 juvenile males.  This is not a bad flock size, but I have seen 20+ birds several times and one year a flock of 100+ birds was reported from  the nearby Woolcara Lane.

Cutting back to today this image shows a male and - somewhat dimly - a female.
 Here is one of the males putting the beak on some haws.
 And a female doing likewise.
What about the pipit, I hear you ask.  Alas, while I am sure the paddocks were covered with them they were all sitting tightly, sheltering from the gale.  

Bird of the Day was Common Starling,   They were common indeed with several flocks of 100+ seen at various places, earning themselves a rating of 1 - give up your bins if you don't see them here and now..  (Of course at our place, much more timbered and about 100m higher, they are quite uncommon and would rate a 4 (seen 20-50% of the time).

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

Satin Bowerbird gets ready for Lanigans Ball.

Image
Having some time to spare today I went to check the bower near "Tom Green's Seat" in the Australian National Botanic Gardens.  The bower was well occupied by what I take to be - based on the green plumage and yellow bill - a 5th or 6th year male Satin Bowerbird.  (With all these images, click on them for a bigger - unfortunately not better focused picture.  The shots were taken hand held on full zoom from about 10m distance into a fairly well shaded location.) He was very much engaged in adding to the construction. Then it seemed that another bird called from the bush above.  This led to a whole lot of activity: the most spectacular (and worst imaged) was a flash of the wings: The bird also did a fair bit of hopping around.  Given that it was still immature I called to mind the greatest traditional Irish song of all time: Diarmuid O'Leary and the Bards performing Lanigan's Ball .  This ditty refers to spending "6 long months at Brooks Academy learning
Read more