Apologies if you have already seen this message - the previous edition seems to
have been lost in the ether ...
Following on from Gavin's nicely timed note yesterday, I figured it was time to
head off to the Oakey Golf Club - 27 23 S, 151 36 E - to find those painted
honeyeaters I'd been dipping on.
After a bit of poking around, I did manage to get good views of a male painted
HE calling from the top of a dead tree - I guess he was doing the territorial
thing as he was swaying back and forth like a canary. There were a lot of
mistletoebirds about, my first dollarbird for the season, families of GC
babblers, choughs and apostlebirds and of course, the ubiquitous weeros.
On a whim, I took the back road to Oakey on the way home and saw a heap of birds
circling around the paddock behind the abattoir. There were a few raptors in
amongst the crows, and two of them proved to be choclate coloured falcons. The
falcons wound up sitting on separate power poles, so I wandered over for a
closer look. Going by their size differences one was male and the other one
female.
I initially thought they might be dark phase brown falcons, but then I noticed
that they had uniformly dark faces, with no sign of any malar stripe. The only
variation from the chocolate face was the grey ceres and bills. I also noted
that the tail at rest was pretty narrow and was slightly longer than the wings.
Because they were sitting on the beams I couldn't get a good look at their legs,
but the legs looked fairly substantial and a hot heavier than the legs of a
kestrel that subsequently sat on the line. When the breeze ruffled their
feathers, I could see the odd bit of white down on the chests [like you see on a
crow]. At one stage, I heard the male cackling on his roost.
I managed to flush the falcons about four times, and it was quite apparent that
their was no barring on the underwings or tails of either bird and that the
female seemed to be comparable in size to a whistling kite, which at one stage
flew about 10 metres above the female.
Both falcons flew with rapid and short wing beats [bit like watching Rolf
Harris's wobble board] and soared/glided on flat wings. They flew low and fast,
and circled high.
As I had Pizzy & Knight with me [it is a better raptor guide than some of the
other guides] I was fairly confident, and when I got home I had a look at
Stephen Debus's field guide to the "Birds of Prey of Australia" - the clear
verdict was that the birds were black falcons.
On that positive note, I settled back to watch the footy, and though the Magpies
had everything going their way, the Lions still came out on top.
A good day all-round.
Cheers, Laurie.
---
Russell Woodford
Music & Info Systems
Sacred Heart College Geelong
http://web.shc.melb.catholic.edu.au/music/auralonline.html
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