The Foxlow Forty-Five today

["martin butterfield" <>]

With beautiful weather this morning, and needing some exercise, I decided to head off on my mountain bike for a loop down the Captains Flat Road and back via the Foxlow Bridge and Hoskinstown.  I ended up recording birds in 5 grid squares.  Highlights (and other comments) are below.

Grid R17: 15 Species.  As usual few birds around beside the road.  DY Magpie and NY Common Starling.  Rufous songlark
Grid S18: 32 Species. This covers both the bitumen and the start of the dirt road back.  A surpise was the large size of a flock of starlings (200+) for this time of year.  IH recorded for Tree Martins and Common Starlings; DY Black Swan.  2 Brown falcon and 1 Wedge-tailed eagle.  Bird of the trip was 4 Black-winged Stilt on Foxlow Lagoon (seen from the road about 600m away).  White-winged trillers.
Grid S17: 9 species.  Few birds, many rabbits.
Grid S16: 11 species.  The highlight was 20 Fairy Martins nesting (ON) in culverts under Plains Road.
Grid R16: 11 species.  The main addition here was Dusky Woodswallow.  The biggest surprise was 71 Australian Magpies in a corner of a paddock off Plains Road.  Such large aggregations are usually later in the year.

Total 40 species in 45kms.

Back in Q16, the highlight was undoubtedly the three DY Black-fronted Dotterels and their parent that have been raised beside a neighbour's dam

Martin