|
g'day all,
Yesterday afternoon, Frank Pierce and Janet Mattiske
from Victoria and I visited the west side of Lake Moondarra and
concentrated on the waders.
We visited both Spring Ck bay and the bigger wider bay to the
south. The cygnets of several pairs of Black Swans had now
almost reached 2/3rds full size. The numbers of Great Crested
Grebe were down to a lone two.
At both bays we observed single Snipe in the
water out a metre from the shore either feeding or just meditating the meaning
of life.
They were all in open territory unlike most of my
previous sightings of them hiding in 40cm high reeds.
Unfortunately they did not exhibit enough characteristics to
identify the species.
We noted Oriental Plover at Spring Ck
Bay
But.....just before dusk, at "Wide Bay", Frank saw 2
birds land over 150m from us.
We were able to get close enough with our scopes to identify
them as Grey Plover.
These were a new bird for me. They had not been recorded in
inland Australia for the first atlas.
The single Black-tailed Godwit I saw at Wide
Bay last week was not seen.
Regards, Bob Forsyth, Mount Isa, NW Qld.
ps Today we ignored
waders so Frank & Janet could get a Painted Finch
tick. We went to Stone Axe Ck bay and saw them
within minutes of arriving. We also recorded Black-tailed Treecreeper,
Spinifex Pigeon, Bustard, Brolga and fleeting views of
several Spinifexbird. A Sea-Eagle
kept a plaintive calling watch flying over its nest at the mouth of Stone Axe
Ck. Unfortunately the Pictorella's I saw last year are still
absent.
| 