A large day

["martin butterfield" <>]

On Friday 19 October Chip Scialfa and I decided to make an attempt on seeing 100 bird species in a day in the ACT using only human powered transport once we started.  The agreed counting rules were that we both had to observe and agree on the identification of the bird, and that heard-only species could be counted.  Cutting to the chase, we ended up with 95 species fully satisfying the rule, 2 where one of us missed a sighting and 2 where we agreed the sighting was probable but not tickable.  Would the person who hid ALL the brown treecreepers at Newline please put them back where they belong?

 

The route was: start and finish at Questacon; Kellys Swamp, Fyshwick SP; Newline; Campbell Park; ANBG; Coppins Crossing with a few diversions along the way.

 

The less common birds observed were: Pied Cormorant (swimming in front of the High Court); Baillon's Crake and Australian Spotted Crake (Crake Alley); Black-winged Stilt (9), Sharp-tailed Sandpiper (3), Latham's Snipe (several) and Black-fronted Dotterel (Kelly's, school end); Peaceful Dove (2), Eastern Shrike-tit, Jacky Winter (several) (Newline); White-fronted Chat (2) (dirt road about 1km East of Coppins);  Rainbow Bee-eater (heard) and Flame Robin (Coppins Crossing).  White-winged Trillers were observed at several sites. 

 

The major disappointments were few thornbills (only Yellow-rumped); raptors (Brown Falcon and Black-shouldered Kite at Coppins) or cuckoos (only Horsfields Bronze-Cuckoo).  Despite my having seen it the previous day there was no Frogmouth at Corroboree Park, and the Powerful Owl was not evident at ANBG.  A mystery was the frantic activity by about a dozen Pied Currawongs around some pine trees at the junction of Beltana Road and Pialligo Avenue.  We suspected there was an owl or accipiter in the trees but after investing 10 minutes couldn't sight anything through the dense foliage at the top of the trees.

 

We were on the track for 11:30 and my odometer had recorded 66.1kms by the time we got back to the cars.

 

Martin