g'day all,
It is still all action here at the Isa !
Weather warmish (38C) and clear.
Today at 11 o'clock I got good views of a single Pied Heron at the
Sewage Ponds.
It was a Juvenile but had a partly grown white nuchal plume
There is no doubt about the identification. The beak was yellow
except it became dark grey close to the eye. Legs were a darker
yellow.
It was slightly smaller than 2 Little Egrets resting 2m away at the
edge of one of the shallow ponds.
It was much smaller than the nearby White-faced Herons.
The bird was first identified a fortnight ago, by Alan Hamer, a
visitor from Switzerland.
(it is amazing how visitors so often advise you about a rare bird in
your own back yard !)
He saw it on top of the embankment in the company of Silver Gulls
The only other sighting in the Isa area (that I can locate) of this
species was by Yvette Clift 17/11/93 who recorded 2 birds.
(This was from a RAOU Australian Bird Count Data Sheet)
This is a rare bird for inland Queensland
Refer... Johnson and Eddie, Aug 2000, V30(2) p 42-44, "A Pied Heron
at Roma, South Central Queensland",
Sunbird the Journal of the Queensland Ornithological Society Inc
(now Birds Queensland)
I hope the photos I took using an adaptor attached to a Televid 77
scope with a 2X adaptor (equiv to 1600mm lens) gives me a good
picture. I suppose everyone will guess this gives me a life tick.
Regards, Bob Forsyth, Mount Isa, NW Qld.
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
|
