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Just reiterating, partly in response to Philip's email, that the birds I watched "drifted"/slowly to the south. There was no suggestion of active or deliberate directional flight.
On Sat, 19 Jan 2019 3:44 pm Philip Veerman < wrote:
Curious, Harvey sees them flying south, when they were flying north over my home, that is about 4 km away. Not that it is important, by my record book of the
time reveals, first observation of Fork-tailed Swifts was “3 with spinetails near Albury 9-2-1975”. This was whilst on a holiday with my parents from Melbourne to my first ever visit to Canberra. And that was about it for many years. I can put a bit more context
to Harvey’s long wait. That I recall, prior to this week I think 4 other days around Canberra in the last 15 years, of which one was last summer, and once somewhere else and one day in China…… I never have seen them in Melbourne or elsewhere in Victoria or
Qld, where looking at WtN was a frequent summer evening occurrence. Nice to see an exotic bird from my back door step, without the need to get dressed. Why are they suddenly outnumbering the WtN by so much? I don’t know if it is a conservation issue of direct
human created problems. In hugely overpopulated Manila and many of the rural parts of Philippines that I visited, especially Palawan, a range of quite similar species of swifts are very common and easy to watch.
Philip
From: Matthew Frawley [
Sent: Saturday, 19 January, 2019 11:24 AM
To: Harvey Perkins
Cc: Canberra Birds
Subject: Re: [canberrabirds] ACT bogey bird slow to fall, swiftly
Nice one Harvey. I first saw the Fork-tailed Swift on 2 February 2006 over Woden and so it was just shy of 13 years until I saw them again, which was yesterday over Wanniassa and Gowrie. This morning,
I have been watching them over my house in east Kambah from just after 9am and then in Mt Taylor Nature Reserve from 9.30-10.30 and then again directly over my house until 11am. I couldn't put a number on how many I saw but there were at least 20-30 of them.
I wonder how many are over Canberra, considering people were seeing them in Fyshwick, Kaleen and Civic at similar times?
On Sat, 19 Jan 2019 at 11:19, Harvey Perkins <> wrote:
Pacific Swift has been my ACT bogey bird for years. Every time there have been reports of them previously, I was never able to catch up with them. Finally, with all this Pacific Swift activity, I have just watched about a dozen of them
circling over the Gleneagles golf course for about 30 minutes (10:34 to 11:03). [Just as well - if I couldn't see them this time, with so many about... ] They then drifted slowly off to the south.
Number 259 for my ACT List for anyone who cares!
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