I know this is a bit out of the COG AOI but members of the list may travel this way from time to time so I thought this may be of interest. We have just returned from a trip to Eyre Peninsula (excellent area, blog to come) and on the way across noted the very large numbers of Black-shouldered Kites and Nankeen Kestrels around. On the way back we recorded the numbers of raptors (and emus) seen. It is 125km from the junction east of Balranald to Hay so we stopped the game when we got 125km East of Hay. Unless the birds can fly significantly faster than 110kph they were all different specimens!
| Species |
West of Hay |
East of Hay |
| Black-shouldered Kite |
29 |
18 |
| Nankeen Kestrel |
5 |
11 |
| Black Kite |
4 |
3 |
| Swamp Harrier |
1 |
0 |
| Brown Falcon |
2 |
0 |
| White-bellied Sea Eagle |
0 |
1 |
|
|
|
| EMU |
19 |
0 |
Another interesting (to me at least) observation was that the obvious crop on the Plain was cotton. We have never seen this before and the bales in the paddocks were very obvious (as were the stray bits of cotton on the roadside) I'd be surprised if we had simply overlooked it when travelling at this time of year.
Martin
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