As I was not familiar with the EBB habitat, Sheena Gillman [one of the EBB
recovery project team] kindly offered to show me some typical habitat around
Spicers Gap.
It was a fine day to be up in the mountains, and I got to see quite a few areas
with promising looking sorghum grass patches [and some other interesting grasses
as well]. However, it has been a hot and dry summer, and we heard nary a peep
or cheep.
We did get to run into a mountain bike rider [who was on a most interestingly
designed bike - disc brakes and only the one strut on the front end] who was an
ex-forestry worker who had poked about an EBB colony in the Conondales in the
late 80s and had dealt with all the EBB notables [and their girlfriends at the
time]. He had also been around at the time of the development of the bat
detector still in use in SEQ.
In addition to the birds I saw round Spicers Gap a couple of weeks ago, we saw a
few red-browed tree-creepers [nice to be able to compare their calls with the
white throated TCs] and had a nice close-up view of a fan-tailed cuckoo.
Heading home, I had a brief view of a harrier [didn't have a good spot to pull
over but it had pinkish-grey tinge underneath] and we had a lovely view of an Oz
hobby on the power lines just outside of Peak Crossing. It posed nicely for a
couple of minutes [while we had a nice close up look at its face and underbody
markings] before taking off in the slashing type of flight typical of hobbies
and putting the wind up a couple of maggies loitering in a paddock.
LK.
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