Was extended to this weekend. Yesterday was pointless. Today better. I did some sites today but really very few birds at any location and really only recorded
conspicuous species, No finches or robins for the whole 3 days and almost no wrens, thornbills, and similar. White-winged Trillers at only one site and not in the big numbers of last year. Having decided on my last site at the western end of Urambi Hills at
least a bit of something special. For about 3 minutes, I watched a pair of Peregrine Falcons harassing a Little Eagle. It did not look overly serious. The PF were chasing and diving at the LE but did not appear to want to make contact, one or other bird side
slipped at each pass. The LE was carrying something, maybe a prey item or maybe a stick it was not overly quick at departing, doing circles, probably to catch a thermal then eventually gained a lot of height and flew off southwards towards Lake Tuggeranong.
The LE was a dark morph. The chase started over the ridge of Urambi Hills and I was by the creek so they were at least maybe 200 or more metres above. I observed one LE at exactly the same spot, 2 (or was it 3 or 4 ?) years ago.
Philip
From: Nicki Taws [
Sent: Sunday, 25 October, 2020 8:37 PM
To: 'Canberra Birds'
Subject: Blitzing the weekend
What a great effort from everyone who got out today in the mizzle and the freezing wind.
I won’t have a lot of the records yet but a summary from the submitted ebird lists gives us a total of 132 species so far, and we haven’t even got to the mountains yet. Maybe the mountain birds will come to us with snow predicted down to
1400m. (Michael Lenz commented on this possibility when he recorded Cicadabirds on Mt Ainslie.)
And some great breeding records coming in – 41 species recorded breeding so far. Nearly every list has breeding magpies on it, which supports my scientific assertion that there have been more magpie nests than ever this year based on the
number of times I have been swooped.
For those who were going to do mountain locations, the whole week’s forecast isn’t very promising. I will be speaking to the rangers tomorrow for an update.
Cheers
Nicki Taws
0408 210736
