birding-aus

Steve Needs a Hand

To: "Birding-aus" <>
Subject: Steve Needs a Hand
From: "Gordon Brook" <>
Date: Wed, 10 Apr 2002 15:49:31 +1000
North Coast NSW
 
Hi Steve
 
I reckon you will need a hand carrying it all to the bank - I'll bring a wheelbarrow.
 
 
How anyone gets caught with this rubbish I'll never know - and yet I do know of two people - 1 in England and 1 here in Australia - amazing. (Not friends, I hasten to add).
 
Almost a daily flight of Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoos at present - coming down from the hills, I imagine.
 
Same goes for Lorikeets - mostly Scaly-breasted but sometimes Little and they NEVER seem to settle, just scream through the trees.
 
Made and spread a lot of mulch this morning which attracted the E Yellow Robins who perched on the fence and kept dropping down onto the mulch to pick off something. Had a new butterfly species on the block this morning - took some video - must look it up.
 
I've never been fortunate enough to land up on a nude beach whilst birding but I we often have a laugh about Morecambe Bay NW England from very many years ago. We parked on the sea front - typical English sea-side setting with continuous rows of boarding houses and small hotels. It was early Sunday morning and the tide was out - that means you can't see the sea any longer but miles of glorious mud and sand is exposed. We had the 'scope on the car roof and were religiously searching (it was Sunday) through thousands of waders. Occasionally odd gulls etc would leave the shore and fly inland and we would follow them with binoculars, sometimes over the boarding houses.
 
It wasn't too long before a police car arrived and stopped by us. It contained two serious looking officers who came over and one asked "Good morning sir, would you mind telling me what you are looking at?"
"We are bird watching" I told him and by the look of disbelief on his face I though he was going to arrest me for being cheeky. (This was back in the early 50's when bins and 'scopes were not at all common.)
"Do you mind if I have a look?" he asked me. I told him to help himself whilst biting my tongue against coming out with a smart remark that he didn't look the type.
 
There was a long silence whilst he alternatively looked through the telescope (a big Dolland draw tube job - good in it's day) then with his naked eye and back again.
"Well I'll be buggered" he said eventually - "there's thousands of the bloody things" "I've never seen anything like that before, how often does this happen?"
 
 
 
 
 
Best Wishes
 
Gordon
Ninox Binoculars & Telescopes

(02) 6649 1077
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