We came up to cairns for the eclipse, we were staying in palm cove but decided
that there would be too much morning cloud over the sea. So we drove inland to
Mareeba and a little further west and had perfect views of the eclipse from a
stop by the road on high ground facing east amidst mango orchards.
Around about were white-bellied cuckoo-shrikes, figbirds, pied butcherbirds and
magpie larks. In front of us was a weedy field with cisticolas calling from it.
The eclipse was about an hour after sunrise, and so not as dramatic as it would
have been later; it only got appreciably dark five minutes before totality, and
totality itself was quite short, only about 1 minute.
My attention was torn between the sun and the birds, I didn't notice any
unusual behaviour, all that happened was that for about the ten minutes of
darkness the birds fell silent and didn't move about. After the eclipse they
carried on as before.
If we'd been on the coast it would have been interesting to see if the
torresian imperial pigeons headed offshore when it got dark!
John Leonard
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