trip report - an interesting morning at Binya SF

[sandra henderson <>]

Cool and windy morning, so I thought it might be a wasted trip over to Binya while I'm in Leeton for family reasons, but went anyway, to my usual spot  near the dam on Wattle Drive (which has much more water than a couple of months ago).  for the first half hour saw and heard almost nothing. then as I was about to give up, a flock of about 20 budgerigars flew up from the grass in front of me. Exciting for me, I've not seen them there before.  They flew about 50 metres and landed again, and a quite remarkable mixed feeding flock developed.  some grey-crowned babblers joined them, from a group I'd been following but not managed to get very close to, then 20-30 white-winged trillers which seemed to come from nowhere, followed by several red-capped robins. A dozen or so rainbow bee-eaters followed this group for about an hour, possibly getting any insects disturbed by the activity. to see all these species together was a real treat.  I drove a little way into the forest closer to Yenda and found a couple of families of Splendid fairy wrens and a very noisy group of apostle-birds with a nest.

 

plenty of waterbirds at Fivebough at present, as Tobias reported last week, although a scope would have been useful to try and put names to the various sandpipers. Near Jerilderie a couple of days ago a quite small farm dam had a shelduck with 9 tiny ducklings. It's still quite dry in the Riverina - they've obviously missed much of the rain we've been getting in Canberra. 

 

sandra henderson