Morass and Balloons

 The start of the drive was not pleasant with 8/8ths cloud and drizzle to about Bruthen.

A Forest Kingfisher has been reported many times in the last 2 weeks from MacLeod's Morass in Bairnsdale so we invested some time in checking the are out.  There were a few other folk also looking but no one got lucky until just after we left.  It reads as though this guy drove up, ticked the bird and left!  We put in a bit over 90 minutes but didn't see it although it was good seeing all the Dotterels out from the boardwalk.  One of the observers the previous day noted that "Spent 4 hours patiently waiting with a group of people trying to search for the bird to then have it perch in a tree next to the road and then fly to the power lines."  

C'est la twitch.  We enjoyed the break and will likely do it again.  The Red-kneed Dotterel was an East Gippsland tick (taking me to 261 species for the Shire, 13th on the eBird list for the Shire and only 66 species behind Rohan Clarke) but I gave the New Bird A Day (NBAD) tick to Forest Raven as the name was half right!

The rest of the drive was quite easy with relatively light traffic, especially in the last few kilometres on the Monash Freeway.

On Monday 11th we set off for a walk in Fawkner Park and were surprised to see balloons on the grass.

This one was displaying droop, so we gave it plenty of clearance.

Another balloon was still incoming ...
... and went right over our head.
They seemed to be going past those on the ground and gave a pretty long burn to get over the trees.
They  more or less made it, in that it got past the trees with the basket intact, although some of the branches on the top of the tree were waving after it had passed.  I suspect some of the passengers might have needed a visit to the laundry on the far side of Punt Rd on the way home.




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