A long season for Darters and Cormorants

["casburnj" <>]

I too have seen recent developments on the Lower Molongolo – on Friday 1^st – in the same place as 2 weeks ago (below the overpass).  There has been some damage as a result of large quantities of water flowing from the Scrivener dam on the northern side of the river, but there is one darter on it’s nest and I assume with eggs under it (this tree previously had 12 darters of varying ages and one nest with 2 fluffy begging young).

 

However there appears to be new nesting and ongoing nesting opposite on the Southern side  – I saw about 5 Little Pied Cormorant nests with birds on nest, and about 6 Darter nests in various stages of development – one of these had wilting to dry green leaves as a base for the nest.   From the northern side of the river it is hard to count accurately as Blackberries and trees block the view. So these are estimates.

I also saw the Little Eagle and one Azure Kingfisher on this occasion – plus sundry other small birds.

Jean

 

From: Jack & Andrea Holland [
Sent: Sunday, 3 February 2013 9:22 PM
To:
Subject: Re: [canberrabirds] A long season

 

Thanks Geoffrey, for the early publicity for COG’s annual boat trip up Molonglo Reach which will take place on Sunday 17 February. 

 

The darter breeding season is indeed a long one, my experience over the now 10 years I’ve been leading these trips is that it starts in September/October but that the main breeding time is in the New Year.  Often we’ve seen very good breeding still in March/April and indeed a couple of times at the end of May we’ve still seen many nests with chicks about to fledge.

 

I’m hoping that the recent rain will have started a new round of breeding, which will mean a range of breeding activity from nest building, birds on nests and nests with young.

 

Details will be in February Gang-gang due out this week, still quite a few places left at this time.

 

Jack Holland 

 

From:

Sent: Sunday, February 03, 2013 10:47 AM

To: m("canberrabirds.org.au","canberrabirds");" title="">

Subject: [canberrabirds] A long season

 

The current length of the darter breeding season was brought to attention this morning on the Molonglo in front of Duntroon, where one nest had young within a few days of leaving, and a nearby female at the top of a willow was breaking off a branchlet to build its own lateish nest.