The water level is now at 1.02m on the depth gauge and there's lots and
lots of mud visible. I've had plenty of easy sightings of Lewin's Rails
and Spotless Crakes since my last report, except for one evening when it
was quite windy. A couple of people I've run into there have reported
seeing Baillon's Crakes (early morning, southern platform) and a Spotted
Crake (evening, northern platform) but I haven't seen any of these
myself.
Deep animal tracks can be seen on the eastern mud flat. A fox was seen
briefly there a couple of weeks ago, so it may be the same animal. No
idea if it's coming down to drink or to hunt, but the tracks do look a
bit like it's been jumping around, so maybe the latter.
This morning around 8am I saw one rail as soon as I arrived at the
southern platform, immediately to the left of the platform. It
disappeared as I struggled with my camera, then another appeared at the
edge of the reeds opposite. I've uploaded a short video to YouTube at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihedHXx6--U. I'm new to YouTube and I
don't know if I could have done anything to avoid the video being so
heavily compressed by the site but you can still recognize the bird.
You can see its chest and tail moving as it calls quietly to the first
bird (might need to turn your sound up), then it dashes into the hole
between the two reed types.
I have a much longer video of it moving right along the edge, feeding
and doing its walk-then-run style of moving, but it's bigger than
YouTube's size limit so I need to work out how to compress it a bit
first.
With high temperatures and no rain forecast for the next week it looks
like we might have nothing but a puddle in the middle soon (only a
slight exaggeration).
Peter Shute
==============================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:
=============================
|
