The Hooded Monarch is still at Howard Springs, NT as of late yesterday (Sunday
29/05/05) afternoon. It was dead easy to locate and we found it in about 2
minutes of literally parking the car at the Howard Springs Nature Reserve,
getting out and having a look around.
This is a pretty neat little bird with a grey back and wings, black (hood) and
white belly. Well done to Roger Potts for picking this bird up....what a find
as you could have easily mistook it for an almost aberrant Leaden or Restless
(Paperbark) Flycatcher. We also picked up the Rainbow Pitta, Spangled Drongos
and Large-billed Gerygones pretty easily too. I managed to get one
unsatisfactory blurry photo of the Monarch before it got too dark (sunset), but
nothing nowhere as good as Roger Pott's photos on the Australian Bird Image
Database.
Earlier in the day we had seen a Sea-eagle about 10k's from any water on the
side of the road eating a road kill about 50'ks West of the Roper Bar, watched
lots of Rainbow and Varied Lorikeets, Black-faced and White-browed Woodswallows
and various honeyeaters pigging out on the nectar of masses of eucalypt flowers
and being hunted by a Brown Falcon and a Brown Goshawk (seperately of course)
east of Mataranka, a Black-breasted Buzzard also east of Mataranka,
Black-necked Storks and Northern Rosellas on the Numbulwar to Ngukurr Road as
we headed up to Darwin plus heaps more.
A fair amount of bushland is burnt out between Katherine and Darwin with makes
it hard to find things like finches, but we managed to see a small group of
Gouldians, Long-tailed, Double-barred and Masked Finches quite quickly on the
Ferguson River North of Katherine. We then tried a bit of Spot-lighting in the
early evening at the entrance to the Darwin Botanic Garden for the Rufous Owl
but dipped, but did manage to see a Bush Stone Curlew at the entrance to the
Airport before heading to Brisbane for a week.
All in all a pretty good birding day!
Cheers
Marc G
Numbulwar NT.
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