Today I was at the the rapidly disappearing (as in drying out) Kelly's
Swamp, in Canberra, one of a small number of local places where many people
have over the past few weeks enjoyed watching all the crakes etc, from which
I will extract this bit of text to the cog list:
One Coot was pecking with no great enthusiasm at what might be the decaying
remains of a fish (or just some biological flotsam). Another Coot standing a
few cm away. The Buff-banded Rail approached between them and began picking
little bits of whatever it was, out of the Coot's beak. This went on about
30 seconds. As in I think 3 times the Coot bent down to shake off a little
bit of whatever it was and when it lifted its head the Buff-banded Rail
pecked at the bits hanging out the side of the Coot's beak. The Coots didn't
seem overly concerned and walked off. The Buff-banded Rail continued
picking over this bit of whatever it is for another 30 seconds then wandered
off. Over the next 10 minutes or so they and several of the Crakes walked
past this bit of whatever again and were not interested. They were actively
feeding on many other things.
>From one of the hides the highest simultaneous count I got to was 8 Spotted
Crakes (at least 4 or 5 in view for the whole 30 minutes or so that I was
there), as well as two Spotless Crakes and one Buff-banded Rail seen so many
times and in so many places that I suspect there were 2 or 3. The Spotless
Crakes spend much shorter time out in the open mud than the others and one
ran back into the reeds when a Willie Wagtail flew over it.
Philip
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