Yesterday morning while we were having coffee in the shade in the tables opposite these shops I noticed some brownish feathers on the ground flapping in the breeze. I looked a bit closer and to my surprise found it was a whole bird lying
prone of the ground, and rather than a house sparrow by its rufous rump it was clearly an alive adult Rufous Songlark.
Unfortunately while it otherwise looked OK, once we approached it could only flap its wings and just manage to lift off a few cms high and move a few metres at best as its legs seemed to be badly injured. After ringing ACT Wildlife we
dropped it off at a local vet, who we expect would have had to euthanise it. Very sad as it was a lovely quiet bird when I picked it up to put it in the box.
How the injury to its legs happened and how it got there is unclear. As far as I can tell from the eBird map the nearest it has been reported (last in mid November) was in the Illoura horse paddocks at least 700 m away. Thinking about
it I can only surmise it got there by some human assistance, we’d been there for close to 10 minutes before we noticed it and I doubt it moved at all in that time.
Jack Holland
