I spent Wednesday night at a motel in Hay, planning to make a quick visit to Oolambeyan on Thursday morning. Not a lot to report from there - many raptors, probably as many as I came across in the whole of the rest of the trip. A stock dam had about 30 Black-tailed Native-hens scurrying around in the salt-bush. Just south of the highway and to the west of Conargo Rd is a vast series of lakelets that looked newly constructed to me (ie maybe in last 5 years). The shallow water – from our (technically more their) Murrumbidgee - would have been evaporating like mad under the baking sun. The crop looked like rice. The only bird life was a sprinkling of White-necked Herons, and at one point a distant sliver of resting terns. Without a scope I could just make these out to be a dozen or so Gull-billed and about twice that number of Whiskered. The other distant snap is from an irrigated paddock on the other side of the highway - plenty of egrets and spoonbills there. You will search in vain for the strain or age-class of spoonbill that normally carries those pale ochre heads. I assume they had been feeding in an infusion of red soil.
