Glad someone other than me is reporting the Crace Crakes!!
Steve, I am not sure why you didn’t find other winter records but I am ignorant of what COG records can readily be accessed and how to do it anyway.
But I regularly reported over-wintering Crakes at Crace throughout winter 2013. The COG Annual Bird Report to 30 June 2013 states that there were 121 records of the Spotted Crake and that 3% were winter records. I suspect those are my records but they
only include one month of winter 2013 i.e. June. I also regularly reported the Spotted Crake in July and August 2013 and this will be reflected in the next Annual Report. 4 of those records were August records.
As for this year, the reason you could not find August 2014 records of the Spotted Crake is that they are still sitting in the system waiting to be dealt with. I have about 30 records back to April which still have Temporary Sheet numbers awaiting entering
the system. This is NOT to criticise the good hard-working people who do this on our behalf but to point out that we cannot always access recent records. In August so far I have reported on Crace Wetland 3 times and recorded Spotted Crakes each time.
From: Wallaces <>
Date: Friday, 22 August 2014 6:13 pm
To: chatline <>
Subject: [canberrabirds] A couple of observations
A couple of observations from the last 2 days.
Australian Spotted Crake at Crace today. I can only find one other August record (COG and Eremaea) and that was last year.
At Mulligans Flat yesterday Striated Thornbills were in the early stages of nest building and Buff-rumped Thornbills were nearly finished nest building. The Buff-rumped Thronbill nest was the most exposed I have found; on the side of a
large tree about 1.4m above the ground and close to one of the main tracks (picture attached).
Steve
