I went out there yesterday between about 4:30 to 7:00 pm. (I haven’t been out birding for weeks). Only thing of interest was in front of Tadorna hide, a nice
breeding plumed Royal Spoonbill picking up and eventually dropping several long sticks, (some much longer than the bird). How they manage to collect enough branches with that weird unsuitable beak is surprising. I missed seeing the Tawny Grassbird. I only
got to hear one brief snippet of the same call as in David’s video near the Snipe hide but could not find the bird unfortunately that was just before I needed to leave. Unless of course it was some person playing a recording….. Also a high flying Brown Goshawk
appeared from the angle I was looking to take evasive action to avoid collision with the water bucket being carried by one of the several fire bombing helicopters that were flying towards the fire over to the north. Although it probably wasn’t quite that high.
Philip
From: David Rees [
Sent: Wednesday, 11 January, 2017 5:26 PM
To: <>; Martin Butterfield
Subject: [canberrabirds] Canberra Tawny Grassbird in song - film
In spite of the hot blustery weather this morning I managed to get some reasonable footage of these birds. There were two of them. Birds were also seen at the same time by Martin Butterfield who logged them with ebird.
You can hear and see them sing. Photos, however excellent don't do that and its the voice that allows you to find them - so different from the reed warblers that occur with them.
The soundtrack (I have more) can be made available separately if COG is interested.
