Some birds found while exercising

 This morning I took myself to the back of the WWTP for an exercise walk on which I would note the birds I saw.  To give added aerobic benefit I schlepped a couple of kgs of scope and tripod.  Initially I thought there were few fowl around, but it turned out they were all on the rocky banks hiding from the wind.  

I was particularly pleased to see a pair of Musk Ducks on the Big Pond.

A Jacky Winter - one of at least 8 in the area - posed nicely.
The total list of species seen is https://ebird.org/australia/checklist/S89171254.

In the afternoon we  went for another walk on the beach at Bastion Point. At the foot of the steps Frances noticed a White-fronted Chat perched on a clump of washed up seaweed.  As we peered at the weed and sand we realised there were Chats everywhere.

The highest count we got to here was 33, which is an exceptionally large flock for this species.  As we got to the mouth - which was very wide - there were another 6.

Returning to the steps, the big flock was still there: some of them perched in a more exposed position. 

Last Winter there were a flock of about a dozen Australian Pied Oystercatchers at Quarry Beach for most of Winter.  This afternoon (29 May about 1515 hrs) when we returned to the steps there was a flock of 25 Oystercatchers feeding on the fresh(ish) washed up seaweed.  

Presumably there was a lot of small animal life in there!  

From time to time I noted leg flags on the Quarry Beach flock, but usually only one or two birds were so adorned.  I photographed the birds I thought were flagged today and got readable numbers off 4 of them: 57, 85; 9A and JJ.  Images below - you will note there is a flag on the bird behind JJ which may be 57 - certainly begins with 5 - or something else.  The flag numbers have been reported to BLA.


Other "good things" noted were 2 Little Egrets, 1 Great Egret and a Caspian Tern sending up a fountain of water when it dived!  The checklist is here.

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