A Superb morning

A birding friend from ANU recently posted about seeing a large number of Superb Parrots on campus near the Coombs Building.  Although I had already written down this species for my bird-a-day effort for 2019 one can never see too many Superb Parrots so I wandered across to his office for a guided tour!

There were a few moments of interest on the way, and I will get to ranting about them later in this post, but here are some comments about, and photos of, the parrots.

Pretty much as soon as we walked in to the area a flock of 15 birds flew by.  At point 1 ...

... we could hear the sound of a young, begging bird.  It is the lower of the two in this image, with its pesteree being an adult male.

 A bit further along at least 5 Superb Parrots were feeding on the ground.  I found this a little surprising, as nearly all my previous sightings have been of birds in trees,.but Joe Forshaw in his magnum opus "Australian Parrots" shows that this is common.  I have since recalled that when this species first became noticed in the broad area an issue of concern was them feeding on roads, on spilt grain and getting killed by other traffic.  The feeders on this day included this male: clearly justifying the species' name.

 At point 2 a cooperative juvenile was feeding on lerp and doing a fair impression of a hanging parrot (although Hanging Parrots are Asian species and quite far from Superbs in the IOC Master List).

Getting back to other matters of the day.

Something was missing from the view shortly after daybreak this morning.

 Ahhh ... there it is,

Our dog walk was slightly interrupted by lawn sprinklers this morning.

TAMS were back working on the trees where the bats roost,

Interestingly, as far as I could see they were pruning live material, not the stuff killed by a good application of bat guano.  But attempting to apply common sense to anything done by TAMS is the 14th Labour of Hercules!

The walk was enlivened by sighting a Pied Cormorant on the edge of Nerang Pool.  One or two of this species have been hanging around the Lake for a fair while.  Further along a happy family of Australian Wood Ducks took to the water,

Now we get to the rant.  Trying to navigate around ANU is almost impossible as there seem to be building works going on everywhere.  How the "organisation" can be cutting academic positions while paying millions for such pointless crap as repaving University Avenue beggars belief.  I guess if you appoint an astrophysicist as Vice Chancellor you can't expect him to have his mind below cloud level.

There is also complete rubbish going on on Northbourne Avenue at the intersections with London Circuit and Alinga St.  This can only be Planner onanism combined with make-work for the CFMEU as employment on ...

... the tram runs down.  Still working on the terminus!

A final point was noticed the misters running at King O'Malleys to keep the Guiness drinkers cool!