Hello all....Just spent a fruitless hour searching for spotless crakes at
UQ. Plenty of juvenile moorhens. I have been a student on and off at UQ for
over ten years and have never seen anything resembling a crake. I hope
someone else can find them. I would be interested to know if the key
diagnostic features were confirmed e.g. red legs, red iris, barred
undertail. As for Stone-curlews I believe their numbers are dwindling at UQ.
I have been only able to find 3 recently (around the small carpark behind
the Maine building (Art gallery). In years past I have seen groups of up to
20.
Cheers Steve Murray
-----Original Message-----
From:
On Behalf Of Andrew Stafford
Sent: Thursday, 5 April 2007 2:47 PM
To:
Subject: around the UQ lakes
Stone Curlews are doing exceptionally well in Brisbane as far as I can tell.
Driving night shift in a cab for many years until recently, they were a
regular sight around the city, mainly on the north side. This include new
housing estates in suburbs such as Macdowall where they would often be seen
on front lawns and median strips along with Masked Lapwings.
It seems they prefer well lit areas and I suspect that's why they've managed
to thrive in spite of the numerous cats and foxes. They're also in the inner
city, in Wickham and Albert Parks (I've spotted them crossing Wickham
Terrace, a six-lane road!) as well as the Botanical Gardens. In St Lucia,
where I live, they are quite tame at the UQ grounds and can be approached
(carefully) to within a metre. However, as another regular in the area I'm
totally amazed at the report of up to 20 Spotless Crakes at the lakes - I
will check that out post-haste.
Which will, happily, get me out in the field. Forgive me, but it's hard to
remember the last time there's been so much rubbish on birding-aus as there
seems to be presently - thankfully, it's the Easter long weekend, so
hopefully everyone will come back with trip reports and stop arguing the
finer points of grammar, political bandwagoneering, carbon-neutral
twitchathons, one-line posts, etc etc...
Andrew
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