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Having read
this, I went again, from about 2:30 pm till about 4:30. As I arrived I
noticed two people with binoculars leaving but I don't think they saw me. I
searched every tree and after about 30 minutes found one SP. It was in the same
tree as they had been in each time I have been. The flowering ironbark tree with
the white plastic bag stuck in it. It was feeding on lerp from the leaves and
from flowers. After some time Julian arrived and we spent the next hour or so
watching this one bird. Sometimes quite close but mostly not in view. They are
amazingly cryptic and as they walk about the tree they just disappear for ages
and then 10 to 20 minutes later you see it again. It had not left the tree. It
only left the tree when a wattlebird chased it. Some time later maybe the same
bird returned from where it had gone to the same tree. Apart from that one,
there were two quick looks at 2 other SP that flew past but not possible to know
how many there were in the area. In that whole time I only heard calls from them
twice, so trying to record them would have been frustrating.
Philip
Hi All
Just back from a beautiful
early spring morning in urban Tuggeranong. I went to see Matthew Frawley's Swift
Parrots (thanks again for reporting these birds) in the carparks opposite the
college and library. I really wanted to get some sound recordings of these birds
having failed miserably in last weekends rain and wind, when the birds where
spending much of the time in the crowns of the trees and the wind was far too
strong to make any decent recordings. What a difference this morning! - stunning
early morning light and nice quiet weekend conditions. The birds behaved
brilliantly and noisily whilst spending much of their time in the college
carpark and often feeding just above head height. There are also many
White-plumed Honeyeaters, a few Fuscous Honeyeaters and Noisy Friarbirds and
Little Corella, Eastern Rosella, SC Cockatoo, Red-rumped Parrot (fly overs) and
Magpie-larks around - not bad for a carpark.
At one time I had most
(?all) of the Swift Parrots in a single smallish tree and as they flew out in
small groups there were at least 17 individuals, possibly more. They did spend a
lot of time split into groups of 4-7 birds. I would strongly recommend anyone
interested to go and look at these birds early in the morning as I had them to
myself, they were not at all wary, and they were showing brilliantly. The busy
chattering and almost flight call that is somewhat reminiscent of a blackbird's
alarm call are a dead giveaway to their location. If you stand in the midldle of
either car park and don't here them within a few minutes, I would bet they are
in the other carpark - well this has worked for me on my three visits. At 7.15am
as a few cars started to arrive in the area, I put the sound recording gear away
and switched over to the camera which even I couldn't help but get a few
reasonable shots as the birds fed only metres away. But I certainly wouldn't
improve on any of Geoffrey's fantastic photographs that he posted early in the
week - thanks for sharing.
Anyway, my main reason for emailing is to
remind anyone who may be interested in sound recording that COG is getting up
and running again trying to fill in the gaps in our sound recordings of local
birds. We had an introductory work shop with Peter Fullagar and Chris Davey a
few weeks ago and decided that if any of the planned revisions to the website
(nothing concrete yet) get up and running in 2011, we would be keen to upload
sound recordings onto our COG webpages as we go, rather than wait the couple of
years it will take us to fill in all our data gaps and make a new CD. At the
moment, Tim Birch, Nicki Taws and I have expressed an interest in doing these
recordings and we have two sets of equipment to share around. Tim is pretty
'au-fait' with the use of the equipment and we are very lucky to have Peter
Fullagar (a bit of guru on these things) overlooking the whole project, so
advice is always on hand. I am a complete novice and just wanted to encourage
anyone else with zero experience who may be keen to contribute to give me a call
or email me.
Anyway, such a nice morning I had better get down to the
record the Crescent Honeyeaters along the Murrumbidgee, there are still several
birds jealously guarding some flowering eucalypts behind the Camp
Cottermouth.
Cheers Dan
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