Well Ian, that is one of those hard to draw a
defining line kind of issues. And your asking is a looooooong way short of
obnoxious. Sadly English doesn't grace us with a word with a meaning
between "Common" and "Rare" (does any other language fill the gap?) so we have
awkward juxtapositions of "moderatelies" and "rathers" and prefixes like "un",
just to make life difficult. I'd say this bird is certainly within that awkward
in-between grouping but not an unqualified "rare".
As for the bird, McComas Taylor as long ago as
1986 in an article CBN brought to notice that the species is regular in Canberra
in winter and his observations has stood the test of time. I like it when I do
but am hardly surprised to encounter the species at places like Kambah Pool or
the lower picnic ground or the visitors centre at Googong in winter. I have seen
it at my house in winter, and at Maria's house in Queanbeyan in winter. >From my
indispensable GBS Report, its rank (in terms of occurrences of species at a site
on a year), is number 111 among the 221 species recorded in COG's GBS over the
first 21 years. That rank (111) is after the Yellow Robin and before Rufous
Songlark, Spotted Turtle-Dove and Skylark. These data are surely obtained
without bias. This is a species that is easy to identify, easy to count as it
doesn't occur in flocks and there wouldn't be a GBS observer who encounters
this species and forgets to record it. It has been recorded on most years in the
GBS and for an average of 3.9 weeks per year. That is just the numbers and hey I
just assembled them.
Philip
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