birding-aus

Princess Parrots in Neale Junction Nature Reserve, W. A.

To: Birding-Aus <>
Subject: Princess Parrots in Neale Junction Nature Reserve, W. A.
From: Jon King <>
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 2009 00:54:41 -0700 (PDT)
We’ve just completed crossing the Great Victoria Desert from east to west along 
the Anne Beadell Highway from Coober Pedy through to W.A., looking for Princess 
Parrots among other things. Despite the GVD being the most reliable area for 
Princess Parrots in the last few years (judging by Atlas records, and recent 
findings in the Jupiter Well area notwithstanding) they are still very hard to 
come by through there.

We took the route very slowly, especially through the Mamungari (formerly 
Unnamed) Conservation Park and adjacent WA/SA border area, which is where most 
recent PP sightings have occurred. Nevertheless, we failed to find any parrots 
until near the end of our trip, in the Neale Junction Nature Reserve, where the 
Anne Beadell and Connie Sue highways cross. Here we had 6-10 Princess Parrots.

On 10th Sept we very briefly had a pair fly over the vehicle flying WNW at the 
unexpected time of 1410, just west of the old landing strip at about 28d 18m 
20s S, 126d 01m 30s E.

We camped at the nice new DEC campground (28d 18m 11.9s S, 125d 48m 52.3s E) 
about 200m west of Neale Junction proper, and early on the morning of 11th Sept 
had a beautiful flock of six Princess Parrots fly very close and low WNW right 
over our camp at 0657. We searched for them to the west of the campground, and 
at 0757 Jon had a pair give excellent views as they flew south in the vicinity 
of 28d 18m 01.9s S, 125d 46m 46.2s E (about 3.5km west of Neale Junction).

We camped in the area again, but there was no sign of parrots at all the 
following morning in any of these areas (which seems quite typical of the 
species, based on our experiences this year).

We had Scarlet-chesteds in a couple of spots in Mamungari, although we were not 
expressly looking for them (for example we never camped in or near mature 
mallee). We saw enormous tracts of severely burned (formerly mature) mallee, so 
presumably SCP has declined significantly in areas of the GVD in the last 
decade or so, which is not encouraging.

Cheers, Jon and Anne King.


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