Dear birding-aussers
Am now gettting back into action after a very inactive 3 months
following the first of two total knee operations - so far successful but
still stiff and rather inflexible. However, have been catching up on
my quarterly surveys, and yesterday was ashamed to say found that where
I have been doing 3 20mins site surveys for 2.5 years, there is a
Grey-crowned Babbler breeding site which I never noticed. Pointed out by
the manager of the property yesterday so I crawled under a fence and
investigated. 7 birds in all, and certainly one dependent fledgling, if
not two. This morning I went to another known breeding site and found
11 birds - 9 adults and 2 juveniles. 5 adults were busy constructing a
nest and 2 were keeping mainly with 2 juveniles - watching 1 adult
allopreening with the 2 juveniled sitting on a cattleyard fence in the
sun. Also noted an adult chasing off a Noisy Miner that came to have a
look at the nest building activity.
Yesterday, returning to Glos from Taree, went off route to have a look
at Bootawa Dam that supplies water tyo Teree, Harrington, Wingham and
sundry other places. It was extremely windy but could see 3 pairs of Gt
Crested Grebe - one pair were fronting up to each other at the start of
a courtship ritual but on seeing me, got all shy and bashful and paddled
off out of sight. I guess the water is too deep for many species but
without a 'scope to have and in that wind, it was not possible to
identify ducks on the far more sheltered side.
In my back yard today, a great fuss occurred when a Sparrowhawk caught a
fledgling, I think one of the 2 remaining Pee Wee fledglings from this
year's brood (1 has already vanished) as the adults were very upset.
However, these last 3 days they've been building a new mud nest so seem
to be optimistic enough to try a second brood. The Spangled Drongo is
still around, and Scarlet Honeyeaters are calling throughout the area.
Not much flowering in the gums yet but stringybarks and ironbarks are
about to open so things honeyeater-wise may get more active shortly.
All for now.
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