Callum Brae imitates Brigadoon

A cold and very foggy scene, quite suitable for hiding a small Scots town. greeted the 20 members who gathered on Narrabundah Lane at 9am.

Dimly visible through the vapour were large flocks of Sulphur Crested Cockatoos and Little Corellas, roosting in trees just inside the Reserve. 
The birds were gradually departing in flocks of about 50 birds (and 100+ decibels) heading for their feeding grounds on the lawns and Nature strips of the urban area. It was conservatively estimated there were about 200 Cockatoos and 150 Corellas.
The last group of birders (from U3A) to visit the Reserve had a near miss from a falling tree.  Some debris was still on the ground.
 Other debris, a little up the track, was cockie left-overs!
As we moved up through the Reserve we saw a few Kangaroos around.
This was a little surprising in view of the various control activities being undertaken in the Reserve (the most lethal not being during daylight).
It was somewhat surprising in view of the temperature to find some Olive-backed Oriole, Black-faced Cuckoo-shrike and (female) Rufous Whistler. These are all usually regarded as Summer migrants. Of the few species which come to the ACT for Winter the only sighting was a (male) Golden Whistler. To the surprise of those attending we saw no Flame Robins.
The first mixed flock encountered (near the Quarry fence line, as the fog lifted, 
...  included 2 Speckled Warblers. 4 Superb Fairy-wrens, 10 Yellow-rumped Thornbills and the first pair of Scarlet Robins. We met at least 4 pairs of Scarlet Robins in total during the walk.
Some eucalypt blossom was encountered (in this case E. macrorhynca).
The final large flock was approximately 50 Welcome Swallows near the entrance to Callum Brae homestead. Two further flocks of approximately 20 birds each were seen in the latter stages of the walk.
Artistic spider webs were available throughout the walk.
We totalled 35 species and a full list can be found on eBird.  To my great pleasure none of the members on the walk were gassed, poisoned or shot!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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 rec...
Read more

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 ...
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 bird...
Read more