-----Original Message-----
From: Irene
Sent: Friday, 16 November 2001 1:34
To: Birding-Aus
Subject: Grampians end October 2001
Hello all
I spent time in the Grampians at the end of October. Another birding-ausser
reported they had 6 inches of rain in September.
Rain continued throughout October and it rained every one of my 10 days there.
A little frustrating but I was able to get
out bushwalking most days and of course the rain mean plenty of water for the
birds. It also brought on the bush so that the
flowering plants were putting on a great show with knockout sights such as
Calectesia intermedia. Various highlights:
** Stayed at the Parkgate Resort, with my cottage looking over a lawn and out
to the bush. Every day, the lawn was picked
over by White-faced and White-necked Herons, egrets, Pacific Black Ducks,
Little Ravens, Australian Magpies. It's a wonder
that there was a single insect or bug of any sort left on the lawn after their
foraging
** Latham's Snipe at Lake Fyans - the local Field Naturalists advised this is
unusual for the area
** Pink-eared Duck on Lake Lonsdale
** Mr. and Mrs. Scarlet Robin, with the male in full glorious colour
** Gang-gangs happily sitting and crunching their way through big chunks of
Callitris rhomboidea seeds, some fairly green
** Yellow-tailed Black-Cockatoos including in trees at eye level
** Purple-crowned Lorikeet scrambling in eucalypts and eating lerps. Musk
Lorikeets too. They were soooooo close!!
** White-fronted Chats
** Sacred Kingfisher male yapping, female giving trilling reply
** Crescent Honeyeater with food in its bill, and being rather wary before
going to a nest
** White-plumed Honeyeaters with chicks in nest
** Varied Sittella - race pileata
** Wonderful shingleback lizards which were very co-operative for photos
** an echidna moving through the reeds near a creek. A funny moment as I
could see the top of the reeds moving but not what
was causing it to happen, so the mind was racing as to "crake? rail? quail?
no-all too small. bittern? still too small"
Finally the echnidna revealed itself.
** 22 lifer species of orchids including some beauties such as Caladenia
venusta, C. versicolor, C. iridescens, Thelymitra
antennifera, Diuris punctata
Cheers and Happy Times with Nature
Irene Denton
Concord West, 12 km from Sydney city, NSW Australia
33°50.278'S 151°05.406'E
(I've converted my Lat/Long from DD MM SS format to DD MM.MMM format which
gives a closer/finer reading)
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