Reading all the comments about large flocks of parrots made me recall 3
events, 2 of which I saw, 1 I didn't.
In late April/early May 2002 I was in NW NSW, NE SA and SW Qld with a tour
company doing a "Corner Country" tour. On the Strzelecki Track just NE of
Moomba, there are a number of large red dunes and these had recently
received rain ,as the Porcupine Grass was carrying lots of seeded heads - we
didn't stop often as we were running late to make Innamincka by nightfall
and it was a general rather than birding specific tour, but there were a
number of very large flocks of budgies along this stretch (and several
raptors helping themselves) that were large enough to be seen several kms
off when they were wheeling about in the sky - impossible to count, but
easily into high 5 figures when all the groups I saw were taken into
account.
Alan Morris may be able to track the exact records, but wasn't there a very
large budgie eruption (counted in a 6 figure sum) on a field of "shot"
millet up near Narrabri in 1995 0r 96 (my NSW Bird Reports only go back to
97).
In 1993 I recall being in Cloncurry (again in May) and seeing Galahs having
a similar effect on the telegraph wires there to that described by Terry
Pacey - in fact when the birds in the middle of a stretch took off the ones
at the end were almost catapulted into the air. The wires from the camp
ground on the eastern edge of town almost all the way into town were full of
Galahs - whether this is/was a regular event in Cloncurry I don't know - if
it was, the council would get pretty fed up of replacing the stretched
wires!
Cheers
Tom Wilson
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