I thought the below phenomenon might be over by now, but it has much
intensified and shifted a bit with the main groups of birds now coming from the
ENE of my GBS rather than NNE.
On Saturday morning at about 6:45 am I had over 60 birds gathering on the
wires in front of 60 Darwinia Tce (just inside my GBS) though the numbers were
difficult to count as some of the birds were constantly moving. I
suspected they were roosting in the gums adjacent to the wires but a search on
Saturday evening didn’t reveal any birds.
However, yesterday morning slightly earlier I disturbed about 20 birds
which came out of a largish hakea bush (around 5 m tall and slightly smaller
width) and were joined by others on the wires above. About 10 minutes
later 20+ could be seen flying W over my GBS towards the Chapman horse
paddocks.
While I could easily find about 10 birds sitting mostly singly in the hakea
after dark last night, this is clearly only one of several (many?) roosting
sites as this morning I first saw 14 coming quite high over from further down
(E) the Terrace. This was quickly followed by around 45 birds gathering
down the wires a bit further down than previous. While some may have come
from the hakea others clearly were coming from further E, including across the
Tce.
Interestingly I have not witnessed the same number of birds gathering
together coming in to roost except for that described below and on another
occasion when 20 birds gathered on the wires to the W of our house. This
was quite late after a storm, so they might have been delayed. Usually
only a few (maximum 6-8) can be seen floating in quite high from the W, and on
other occasions very few birds at all are observed.
So that is something still to resolve, as well as where they are actually
going.
Jack Holland
From:
Sent: Monday, February 16, 2015 10:54 AM
To:
Subject: Magpie-lark roost flights
Over the past 3 weeks there has been noticeable movement of Magpie-larks in
my GBS in the first hour or so in the mornings, coming up from Rivett settling
for a few minutes and calling from the wires (and sometimes engaging in many
disputes) before departing in the direction of the Chapman horse paddocks.
In the last hour of so before sunset they can be seen doing the same thing but
in reverse, and usually in a looser group.
Last night at around 8 pm at least 14 could be seen going in pairs over a
period of 5 minutes or so into a large blue gum in the nature strip off Darwinia
Tce in front of house. Whether they actually roosted there is unclear as
there was quite some movement in and out (and are impossible to see easily once
in there), certainly this morning numbers that seemed to be coming out were
fewer than seen last night.
Jack
Holland
