Have now completed over 7,000km from Darwin through Queensland / NSW / Victoria
/ SA and will be back in the NT in a couple of days. Today did a small 320km
side trip to find the Short-tailed Grasswren at the Stokes Hill Lookout in the
Flinders. Located one on the up slope on the other side of the Gully south
west of the lookout (looked like good Grass-wren habitat and it was!). Thanks
Greg Roberts and others for hints on this and other fora (forgive me - I did 2
years of Latin and "forums" just doesn't make it for me.
Except for an old Emu carcass and fresh dead Magpie today, I have seen very few
bird kills along the road. I have however fortunately seen over 30 dead foxes
and many many mice (at night). This either means foxes are very unlucky or are
breeding up in response to the mice / rat / rabbit numbers - I fear the later.
Oh and stranger than fiction I was talking to my daughter in SA yesterday about
Piping (Crow) Shrikes (this is the unofficial emblem of SA where migrants
confused it with the Scottish bird) / Magpie Larks. I instinctively called it
a Murray Magpie (I lived in SA for about 14 years before moving to the NT). I
now live in Darwin and one nests 2 metres from my 3rd floor apartment door!
(several clutches in the 6 months I have been there, including rebuilding the
nest from scratch after the Cyclone!). I have heard it called Pewee in most
States and Mudlark occasionally (I assume due to the mud nest).
Rob Burgoyne
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