At Hay I met a professional birding guide with a couple of overseas visitors. He said Binya SF had been good the day before and mentioned the same dam where Sandra relayed the reports of Turquoise Parrots a few months ago. So (this was yesterday) I headed for the dam which I knew from before and found birds coming in even though it was only 230 in the afternoon. The dam is shown below. I stationed myself where indicated by the white arrow, in what shade there was. It must have been about 40 degrees. In the next two hours a lot of turqs came in drinking and bathing. Most at once was 8. If they were all different individuals there would have been at least 60 altogether. Other birds to use the water during that time are listed below. It was so hot a small frog (below) actually jumped out of the water onto the bare ground a couple of times just to cool off. I had planned to stay until late afternoon but there’d been so much action that in the heat I thought that was enough for me so left for Canberra at 5pm. There are some interesting omissions in below list, eg only parrot/cockatoo apart from the turqs was one ringneck. I’ll transmit one graphic to convey the flavour to end this series.
A Ringneck
Bee-eater (plunge dipping)
Common Bronzewing
Peaceful Dove
Diamond Dove
Bar-shouldered Dove
Apostlebird
B-f Cuckoo-shrike (plunge dip)
W-w Triller (m&f)
Ruf Songlark (m&f)
Brown-headed Hon
Wh-eared Hon
Wh-plumed Hon
Spiny-ch Hon
Striped Hon
Dusky Woodswallow
Mistletoebird (imm male)
S Whiteface
Diamond Firetail
Ruf Whistler
W Wagtail
