David Taylor and I left my place at about 4.45 this morning and
beetled up to Bundy. David rang Chris when we stopped at Childers to
get directions. The news was not good - they hadn't found Buffy after
a couple of hours of searching. None deterred, we rocked up 45
minutes later and found our way to the point where the twitchers were
assembled. The scopes were set up and there was Buffy in the
viewfinder. I spent the next couple of hours listening to to the
sound of rapid fire camera shutters.
Buffy spent a lot of time making its way up and down the shoreline in
front of us - eating most of the time. It did a couple of micro
flights in front of us.
Just as Biggles [Darwin birding legend] and his companion were making
their way over to our location, Buffy decided to take off and flew
high out of sight. A bird [which may have been Buffy] flew "back"
overhead landing somewhere in the wetland a couple of minutes later.
David and I left (to see if the black-headed red-billed bar-tailed
gull reported at Bagarra Beach had legs) before Buffy was relocated.
We didn't find any Franklins Gull, but did manage to find the one
lookout on the Burnett Plain as we headed inland. The drive home was
a bit of a shocker - two big prangs - one on each side of Gympie
stopping traffic for kilometres. We did an about face at the second
one and followed the Kadanga Road until we could get back to the
highway - we heard on the radio that the highway was blocked both ways
and wouldn't be cleared for hours.
Moral. Always carry maps showing bypasses when going on twitches.
Thanks to Chris Barnes for reporting an interesting find and for
arranging access to the site.
Regards, Laurie.
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