Lake Rd Bungendore

["Michael and Janette Lenz" <>]

Martin,

 

well done. The "dam" at Lake Rd I always considered a 'natural wetland'. At some stage the owner of the neighbouring block drained it,  created the earthen wall along his fence and just left a small wet area (without much significance for birds) on his block. It was certainly good to see many waterbirds back at this site.

 

I was briefly also along Lake Rd on Sunday around lunch time, just far enough to get an idea how close the water had come up. I could spot in the distance 3 Great Egret and 34 White-faced Herons, also 1 Cattle Egret closer to the road.

 

Overall, as expected, as yet not large numbers of waterbirds, but Coots and Pink-eared Ducks as mentioned earlier by Erika, have not been spotted for a while (years) on Lake George.

 

Michael Lenz

 

From: m("gmail.com","martinflab"); CTRL + Click to follow link" href="">martin butterfield

Sent: Tuesday, March 27, 2012 10:07 AM

To: m("three.com.au","lyrebird"); CTRL + Click to follow link" href="">

Cc:

Subject: Re: [canberrabirds] Lake Rd Bungendore

I returned to Lake Road yesterday and paid more attention to the big dam.  In fact there are quite a few waterbirds on it , including a Musk Duck (possibly young male - the 'sac' wasn't obvious) and at least one immature Australasian Grebe. 

Going out on to the Lake bed - with the permission of the landholder - I was able to establish that most of the flock of ducks i was able to ge near were Grey Teal with quite a few Pacific Black Ducks and a small number of Chestnut Teal.  Then a pair of Australian Shelduck spotted me and everyone left for Currawang (on the far side of the Lake)!

The number of insects on the lake bed approached the numbers reported from the Summer Arctic.  Fortunately they appeared not to be interested in my bodily contents and, as soon as I stopped walking on them or their habitat, returned to their normal business.

A final comment is that tit was suggested that the big dam isn't in fact a dam but a natural hollow forming a wetland.  Does anyone else have a view on that little bit of trivia?

Martin

On Mon, Mar 26, 2012 at 10:22 AM, <> wrote:

Martin and others, after an interesting visit to Bungendore and an excellent lunch, we drove along Lake Road and saw most of the same species you reported but as we were leaving the area we saw a pair of Black-shouldered Kites near the Lake View Homestead.  Only raptors seen and, indeed, it is not very common these days to see any raptors around even on a drive to Sydney and back.

 

Lake Road used to be a favorite of ours about 15 years ago and we would visit several times each year but that was when the water was lapping up to the road and many Asian people would be there fishing.  But it is good to see the water coming back and the grass up to the cattle's bellies.

 

Hazel Wright