Dear Birders,
Following yesterdays report on my recent visit to the 2 vagrants in WA I
thought I should mention some other nice birds seen on the trip. There were
Spinifex Pigeons at the Whim Creek site as well as at a couple of other rather
random stops made for the purpose of seeing what was about. I also picked up
Painted Finch on 2 occasions and 1 Pink-eared Duck in a pool on one of the
rivers between Karratha and Whim Creek. There were a lot of raptors about
including Spotted Harrier, Whistling Kite, Australian Kestrel, Black
-shouldered Kite, Black Kite and Brown Falcon.
In Dampier (the port for Karratha) there was a flock of around 100 Star Finches
in the bushes beside the Esplanade opposite what looked like a sailing club.
They dropped down to the ground from time to time only to then burst into the
air in a great cloud and settle back into the bushes for a few minutes before
repeating the exercise. There were quite a lot of Zebra Finch at the same site.
On the rocks beside the sailing club were a pair of Beach Stone-curlews. I was
interested to see one of them pick up a large spiral univalve mollusc. It then
walked quite deliberately some 30 meters past a number of pointed rocks until
it came to a rock with a horizontal upper surface. It then threw the mollusc
with its beak against the flat surface of the rock. It repeated this some 6
times before shaking off some or all of the broken shell and swallowing the
remainder. Has anyone else seen this behaviour? The bird was clearly using the
flat surface as a "passive" tool like an anvil in a most intelligent way.
I picked up male Red-capped Robins at both Karratha and Geraldton. Geraldton
also yielded a couple of raptos not seen further north being Wedge-tailed Eagle
and Osprey.
Regards
Peter Marsh
==============================www.birding-aus.org
birding-aus.blogspot.com
To unsubscribe from this mailing list,
send the message:
unsubscribe
(in the body of the message, with no Subject line)
to:
=============================
|
