Martin,
There is a huge water storage on the Hay Plain but I can’t remember exactly where it is – I think it is east of Hay but very obvious on the western side of the highway. This water has been getting pumped out of the Murrumbidgee River for years. I had always assumed that it was for irrigating the corn crops seen out there but having it used for cotton would not surprise me. It is no wonder farmers down-stream complain about lack of water, especially when times are tough.
Mark
From: martin butterfield [
Sent: Saturday, 28 July 2012 9:32 AM
To: COG List
Subject: [canberrabirds] Birds of the Hay Plains
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.
