WW to AIS campus Bruce

[martin butterfield <>]

The editors of Gang gang may wish to use the following material in quotes as the report for the outing.

"30 members and guests came to the AIS and after a little trial and error all gathered at the intended place.  The day was warming up but by the time those with stamina adjourned to the coffee shop we had recorded 40 species of which 7 generated breeding records.

"The signature bird of the AIS recently has been Superb Parrot and they were present in large and noisy numbers.  As a conservative estimate there were 30 birds present including several dependent young.  One bird was observed to have a very short tail, suggesting it might have have come from a nest in the near vicinity.  While most of the birds seemed to be shifting from tree to tree in the car parks some appeared to fly off into Bruce Ridge.  It would seem very useful if the setters of 'controlled' burns avoided doing this in the Bruce Ridge area while there might be Superb Parrots in nest hollows.

"The signature bird of the AIS used to be the Australian Hobby seen hawking moths in the evenings during Brumbies matches.  They haven;t been seen so much since the Gregan-Larkham era, but one turned up today at high altitude joining 2 Nankeen Kestrels and a couple of Australian Ravens in harassing 2 overflying Australian Ravens.  A Black-shouldered Kite remained on its perch oblivious to this display of aerial excitement.

"The other less common bird seen was a Buff-banded Rail skulking along the wetlands against the bicycle path on the Northern end of our route. A full list of birds seen will be posted to the COG website in the near future.

"Other breeding records were Sulphur-crested Cockatoo (ON), Noisy Miner (DY), Eurasian Coot (DY), Striated Pardalote (ON), Crested Pigeon (ON) and Noisy Friarbird (NY)."

The above and the least bad of my photographs from the outing are on my blog.

Gang-gang editors may wish to include the following as a notice for the next WW.

"For the January outing we are going to Warks Rd in the Brindabellas, with a possible short stop at Urriarra Homestead Dam en route.  As it is one of our longer drives, I suggest meet for car pooling at Stromlo Forest Park at 8:00am so that we are in the Forest by 9:00am.  I'd expect to make several stops along the forest roads as well as doing some walking along the trails so suggest people bring lunch as well as lots of water and bug rellent.  If there is a total fire ban this outing will not take place."

--
Martin Butterfield

http://franmart.blogspot.com.au/

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