Hello Jill,
It's worth a lot, thank you for the sighting. Its a very interesting one
because it fills in the gap between Vic River populations which are regular
and in big numbers and a couple of reliable sightings further east on the
upper Waterhouse River. The other interesting factor is the healthy flock
size. This is closer to the sorts of numbers that Stars should be in at this
time of year.
What this suggests to me is that they are more likely to be resident in the
area, rather than just vagrants. These birds would presumably form part of a
population on the Daly River. All we need now is records from further down
the Daly River! I had been wondering whether the records from the Waterhouse
River could have been part of a little known population on the upper Roper
River. This could still be the case, although your sighting suggests that
they could also have been dispersing birds from the Daly River.
If Stars are on the Daly, this provides a much closer population to the
northern parts of the NT. Birds from here could be the ones resposible for
the records a lot further north. The other question raised is that if Stars
are on the Daly are they on the Fitzmaurice River and the Moyle Rivers which
are between the Victoria River and the Daly River. Do any intrepid northern
atlassers want to take on this mission? The other interesting expedition
would be to try and locate Stars anywhere on the Roper River or the Cox
River which are the biggest rivers between what I've mentioned above and the
McArthur River Star Finch population which is closer to the Queensland
border. I can provide plenty of other interesting places for people to
search if they are interested but I won't bore everyone here.
I apologise if I've confused too many people with names of places that they
don't recognise. Let me know if you can't find them on a map.
Cheers,
Mick Todd
Michael Todd
Tropical Savannas CRC
c/o CSIRO
PO Box 780, Atherton, Qld, 4883
Phone- (07) 40918837
Email-
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