A short trip to Canberra (pt 1)

 Because the medical industry cannot get its act together Frances has an appointment early this month and I had one tomorrow.  There seemed no point in subjecting her to sitting in the Mazda for 8 hours for no benefit so I have come up solo.  Lots of music to listen to as I came along.

I called in to refuel at our New Best Place in Bombala but they had no diesel.  😲but it wasn't a problem as NBP has caused the other places in Bombala to drop there prices also, so I filled up at Ampol.  Then on to Black Lake where there were man, many waterfowl.  I guessed 500 Coot! Top bird was an Australian Hobby.

On to Nimmitabel where a pie was acquired for lunch.  This was a disappointment as the crust was very dry: rated about 7 on the official scale whereas they are usually about 8.5.  Given the temperature as I left 'coota I had expected it to be around 23C when  got to Nimmitabel.  That had started to look a bit unlikely as it was 15C at Black Lake!  In fact it had staggered to 19C for Nimmitabel so I was out of range.

Driving along towards Canberra I hit a major storm just after Michelago: about 5km of very heavy rain,  I hope I can get a bit of birding in at Kelly's Swamp.

The deal at Kelly's was to spot an Intermediate Egret - an officially rare bird.  That turned up quite quickly. Note the gape doesn't go past the eye.

While the neck is bent this is not the sharp s-bend of a Great, and the neck is no longer than the body.  Note the huge feet.

I saw at least two of the egrets: some other observers have seen 3 on one visit.  A Little Pied Cormorant and a pair of Darters were at the school end of the swamp..
This is a radar image of the storm I drove through, a little after I had done so.
Looking South shows the storm incoming.  I headed for the car.
I called in ay Summit Brewery and while there the storm arrived.  I had to stay in the building for about 30 minutes before the rain stopped.  This guy had to go out to his car and was nearly drowned.
There was a lot of wind in the storm with the spray coming at least 30 m down this passage.  Eventually a worker dropped the door.
This is about the peak of the event,
A shot of the lightning strikes from Blitzortung.com.  The circles are the latest,
The BoM at Canberra Airport recorded 27mm in the hour 1500hrs to 1600hrs.  On the radio news a little later somewhere a little further West reported 82 mm in the hour: I think they should move their gauge away from the overflowing gutter!




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