John
While you are correct in thinking most Fork-tailed Swifts are seen later in
south NSW, we
are dealing with a family of birds that have the ability to turn up almost
anywhere, anytime.
While most sightings in south NSW and Victoria are made in February and
March I have records of them near Melbourne as early as October. In all, I
have 322 records of Fork-tailed Swifts in Victoria and 25 for Tasmania. One
of the Tassie records is for August and one for December, and the rest are
Jan - Apr.
As for this season the first sightings I have received, were from Adrian
Boyle at Broome Bird Observatory on 12 September. These 12 birds were
quickly followed by seven other sightings in the same area. I have no other
Fork-tailed sightings as yet. Does this mean the swifts seen at Pambula
crossed all of Australia and no one saw them? If you have some records,
please let me & or the list hear about them.
By the way John, could you give us a date (& time?) for your brothers
sighting
please?
Thanks for your records - and I am still adding to my database if anyone
else would care to send in their swift &/or swiftlet records. Many thanks
and may you all enjoy some happy birding
Mike
--
Dr Mike Tarburton
Assoc Prof Biology
Pacific Adventist University
PMB Boroko
Papua New Guinea
Birding-Aus is on the Web at
www.shc.melb.catholic.edu.au/home/birding/index.html
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send the message
"unsubscribe birding-aus" (no quotes, no Subject line)
to
|
