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Well, a rather modest wet this year. I live at Mt Barnett/Kupungarri along
the Gibb River Road. The area I keep an eye on runs from Gibb River community in
the east to Imintji in the west. With the sewage pond overflow pond totally
drying up yesterday, it seems the wet is now all but over. The Gibb River Road
was closed last week but is now open and a campervan of German tourists turned
up today and are the first this year to camp at the Manning Gorge camp ground.
I've been down there a few times and the White-quilled Rock-Pigeons still sun
themselves at dawn on their favourite rock overlooking the gorge. With very
little traffic on the Gibb River Rd I have flushed White-quilled Rock-Pigeons
from the road itself especially around the March Fly Glen area.
What I was interested in was what birds would turn up in the wet that I
hadn't seen in the last months of the dry. Naturally, waterbirds feature on the
list. I've seen Black-necked Stork, Glossy Ibis, Brolga, Australian Spotted
Crake, Purple Swamphen, Eurasian Coot, Snipe ?species, Little Egret,
Hoary-headed Grebe, Buff-banded Rail. Migrants include up to 12 Sharp-tailed
Sandp-pipers, 1 Greenshanks and 2 Wood Sandpipers. Both Fairy and Tree Martins
passed through as did a few small flocks of Fork-tailed Swifts. A couple of
White-breasted Woodswallow flocks came briefly.
During the dry I had seen large numbers of Long-tailed Finches, Crimson
Finches and a few Masked Finches, Double-bars and even the odd Pictorella and
Gouldian. In the wet some Chestnut-breasted Mannikins have been about. No Zebra
Finches here wet or dry. One pair of Long-tailed Finches is currently nesting in
the back of the TV satellite dish. Other sightings of interest have been:
- Silver-crowned Friarbird feeding a flying Pallid Cuckoo youngster.
- A good number of night birds on the road. I was driving at night along the
Gibb River Road last week and from about 25km west of Imintji to about halfway
to Mt Barnett between 8-9pm I flushed numerous night birds from the road. I
had a Troopie full of people from the Imintji and Kupungarri communities
so couldn't stop. There were bout 15 Boobooks, 7 Spotted Nightjar, 3 or 4
Tawny Frogmouths, about 5 Owlet Nightjars and one that was probably a Barking
Owl.
- An invasion of Button-quails calling in many places from the long grass.
Probably Chestnut-backed.
- A small flock of a dozen Wandering Whistling-ducks. Plumed are the common
Whistling-ducks here. About 240 on a pond by the Mt Barnett Roadhouse at the
moment.
A few sightings I don't think I reported from the dry:
- The Purple-crowned Fairywren family that live in the pandanus along
Manning Gorge
- Watching a pair of Sandstone Shrike-thrushes feeding a flying
youngster
- An Osprey that flew up Manning Gorge to the waterfall and then leisurely
flew back.
Don Hadden
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