Still swifts about

["Philip Veerman" <>]

In part inspired by Matthew Frawley's report today of more of these on Wednesday, I went to the same place today. Although I had to wait a long time (there were many other birds there, and a man running by stopped to tell me that he had seen Red-necked Wallabies up near the summit recently, a new one on me). At 17:38 three White-throated Needletails flew within about 50 metres of each other, from somewhere close over the summit of Mt Taylor travelling over me, very rapidly and directly pretty much straight west. I could well have missed others but this time there was no group of them. And I wasn't confusing them with the RAAF Roulettes, which I saw whilst driving home from Woden about an hour later.

 

Philip

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Philip Veerman [
Sent: Friday, 9 March 2012 10:17 PM
To: 'canberrabirds'
Subject: [canberrabirds] Still swifts about

Still swifts. Not as in stationary swifts.

 

This afternoon at 4:30 I went to Mt Taylor till about 6:30 (did my usual stroll along the lower west slopes). Very active place for the usual thornbills etc. I saw two swifts - I mean White-throated Needletails - fly very fast westward probably over Drakeford Drive but that was an instantaneous viewing . Then after I continued along the power line track and looked up to the summit of Mt Taylor I could see several more of them. Far away very high and barely visible and they were no doubt using the wind blowing up the side of the mountain to gain altitude and doing a lot of looping flights, very high then dropping down and rising again. Several attempts to count them got me to 6. A few minutes later the group came closer down the west side and I got as many as 18, but even in a clear sky I kept losing them and finding them again, then again some minutes later with clearly many more and much lower and closer, the best count I could get was between 30 to 40. Several more views as I continued back to the car to go home in the vain hope of seeing some from home.

 

Philip