I have just got back from a quick weekend trip to Darwin which went well,
Biggles took me to a few of his favourite places including the Leanyer Sewage
Treatment Plant. I also drove out to Nourlangie Rock and then down to Pine
Creek and was heading toward Katherine when a big storm hit so I turned around
and headed back to Darwin - all up I covered about 950km in a day and a half.
I managed 4 new birds, the Oriental Pratincole, Eurasian Little Grebe,
Yellow-rumped Mannikin and White-lined Honeyeater as well as 3 sub-species I
hadn’t seen before – the escarpment subsp. of the Helmeted Friarbird, NT subsp.
of the Grey (Silver-backed) Butcherbird and the Asian subsp. of the Little
Egret (which everybody I spoke to up there reckons stands a good chance of
being split from the Australian Little Egret one day). This brings my total
to 670 Aussie birds.
We thought we had found a vagrant gull and called Niven McCrie out to take a
look. It was just a very malnourished dodgy looking second year moulting
Silver Gull with a dark tail band but if anybody wants a couple of thousand
photos of it drop me a line... (oh, and sorry for the call out Niven).
I dipped on the Swinhoes Snipe, Ruff, Grey Wagtail that had been seen up there
in recent weeks as well as the Pictorella Mannikin and Gouldian Finch (the
torrential downpour put paid to the idea of finding them around Katherine).
Instead I got a flat tyre which I had to change in the rain.
I stayed that night at the Adelaide River Inn which is famous as the bar in
Crocodile Dundee and has 'Charlie' the Water Buffalo stuffed and mounted beside
the bar.
Biggles called just after I got back into Brisbane to tell me he had found a
Black-headed or Franklin’s Gull (at the time he wasn't exactly sure what it
was) at the wharf – drat!!!!
All up a great weekend of birding, if a little short.
Cheers,
Carl
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