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Hello again, to get things rolling here's a rough
copy of what I sent to Bob Forsyth after our Mt Isa section. Lots of boring
numbers, but hopefully something of use to someone somewhere.
At McNamara's Road spent a 2.5 hours bashing
excellent spinifex a couple of km beyond the track to the cairn with only
Spinifexbird and Black-tailed Treecreeper of note, decided to drive to the cairn
and had to slam the brakes on as a cracking male Carpentarian hopped up by the
side of the road and gave us 15 seconds of crippling views. What was presumably
his mate had dived across the road for cover. The sighting was 8.2km from the
main road. Spent the middle part of the day missing Ballara GW at Pamela St,
then at Wide Bay, more of which later.
At the end of the tried the Mica Creek Ballara site
and just as we were on the verge of giving up, having decided to try "one more
hill" scored with a cracking pair at close range in exactly the place described
in Thomas and Thomas!
Next morning tried Wide Bay again having failed to
find Long-toed Stint or any snipe, and missed both again.
Didn't count everything at Wide Bay, but the
following tallies may be of some interest:
486 Pink-eared
Duck
593 Sharp-tailed Sandpipers
9 Green Pygmy Geese
1 Cotton Pygmy-Goose
34 Marsh Sandpipers
32 Wandering Whistling-Ducks
10 Aussie Pratincoles
5 Freckled Duck
5 Oriental Plovers
8 Red-necked Stints
6 Whiskered Terns
3 Caspian Terns
3 Red-necked Avocets
10+ YELLOW CHATS, in the brushy stuff by the lake.
Struck us as being rather Yellow Wagtail-like (whereas Gibberbird was like a
Wheatear, Orange Chat like Stonechat)
12 Oriental Pratincoles
2 Gull-billed Terns
8 GC Grebes
13 Little Whimbrels
1 Silver Gull
1 Pacific Golden Plover
Also vaguely in that area, a dam c30km south
of Mt Isa, east of the road yielded:
1 Wood Sandpiper
1 Marsh Sandpiper
10 Sharp-tailed Sandpipers
12 Pink-eared Ducks
19 Freckled Ducks
9 Plumed Whistling-Ducks
1 GC Grebe
All the best
Steve keen
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