birding-aus

Cranes at Hasties and Fantail at Brown River

To: Peter Ewin <>
Subject: Cranes at Hasties and Fantail at Brown River
From: Steve <>
Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2013 21:11:35 +1000
G'day Peter

HBW Alive (www.hbw.com) reports that the Chestnut-bellied Fantail inhabits:

"Hill forest to c. 1370 m, locally to 1750 m; also in lowlands in vicinity of 
hills and locally in upper and lower Trans-Fly region. Replaced at higher 
elevations by R. albolimbata".

They also say "At R Brown (SE New Guinea), estimated foraging substrates were 
branches 70%, leaves 14%, aerial 15%, trunks 1%."  That would be where you were 
I suspect.

They also say "Occurs in Varirata National Park" which is not far from Port 
Moresby but I don't know the altitude.

For Friendly Fantail they say "Found mainly at 1370–3600 m, including above 
timber-line; on occasion as low as 1130 m.  Replaces R. hyperythra above c. 
1380 m."

Cheers
Steve

On 31/07/2013, at 8:13 PM, Peter Ewin <> wrote:

> Evening all,
> Just back from an eight day trip to PNG with a couple of days in Cairns (trip 
> report to follow) - had a great time, though birding is ridiculously 
> difficult.
> A couple of questions about a couple of IDs.
> We visited Hasties Swamp near Atherton on Monday and cranes could be heard on 
> the private land behind the swamp, but could only be vieiwed (without a 
> scope) from the road over the hill. It is probably a long shot but does 
> anyone have a potential ID on these - my thoughts are Sarus, based on 
> location (and comments in Weineke) but any local knowledge would be 
> appreciated (if both likely then I will have to leave as unknown)
> The other concerned a fantail seen at Brown River near Port Moresby. We were 
> looking at a group of birds in lowland swamp forest west of Brown River with 
> our guide Daniel Wakra, Black Thicket and Northern Fantails were present but 
> another fantail was also there, which Daniel called as a Friendly Fantail. It 
> wasn't until I got back that evening that I looked at guides and this would 
> appear to be an exceptionally low altitude for this species. The bird 
> certainly looked like the picture in Beehler et al. and behaved much more 
> like a typical fantail (i.e. certainly not like a Northern with much tail 
> fanning and movement) and there were was no rufous present (the thought was 
> possible juvenile Chestnut-bellied but this would also appear to be too high 
> as well). The problem is no other species seems to occur at this altitude and 
> so I was wondering if anyone has any experience with this or other species of 
> Fantails in this are/habitat.
> Cheers,
> Peter
>                                         
> ===============================
> 
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list,
> send the message:
> unsubscribe
> (in the body of the message, with no Subject line)
> to: 
> 
> http://birding-aus.org
> ===============================

===============================

To unsubscribe from this mailing list,
send the message:
unsubscribe
(in the body of the message, with no Subject line)
to: 

http://birding-aus.org
===============================

<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>
Admin

The University of NSW School of Computer and Engineering takes no responsibility for the contents of this archive. It is purely a compilation of material sent by many people to the birding-aus mailing list. It has not been checked for accuracy nor its content verified in any way. If you wish to get material removed from the archive or have other queries about the archive e-mail Andrew Taylor at this address: andrewt@cse.unsw.EDU.AU