Is this an outstanding year for crakes and rails for some reason?

["Jeremy O'Wheel" <>]

There's been a lot more than usual crake sightings in Tasmania this year,
especially at Gould's Lagoon on the outskirts of Hobart, especially Aus
Spotted and Ballion's, which have been rarely seen there in the past, but
have been seen a lot over the last few weeks.  I saw a lot of Buff-banded
Rails in South West WA while I was there in September and November, but I
have no idea whether those numbers were normal or not.

Jeremy


On Mon, Jan 7, 2013 at 11:19 AM, John Graff <> wrote:

>
> Hi David, Around Perth for the last two summers we've had higher than
> normal numbers of Australian Spotted Crake, though there doesn't seem to
> have been much of a spike in the other species. I assumed this was a result
> of good conditions inland over the last 2-3 years. We have also had a bit
> of Black-tailed Native-hen irruption (eased off now), a number of Painted
> Snipe records (very rare in SW WA usually), and higher than usual numbers
> of other inland-breeding waterbirds including White-necked Heron, Red-kneed
> Dotterel and Gull-billed Tern. In addition, irruptions of several arid zone
> bushbirds, most notably Black & Pied Honeyeaters, and currently
> Budgerigars, but also small numbers of Little Button-quail and Diamond Dove
> Cheers,John
>  > From: 
> > Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2013 10:22:55 +1100
> > To: 
> > Subject: [Birding-Aus] Is this an outstanding year for crakes and rails
> for   some reason?
> >
> > I'm located on the far south coast of NSW near Bermagui where I've been
> > seeing Spotless Crake (1)  and Spotted Crake (up to 3 at a time) in a
> > location where I've not seen them before. There's also Buff-banded Rail
> > there, which is not a surprise  Further south in the shire, the crakes
> are
> > showing up as well. The Canberra bird list has been alive with crake and
> > rail sightings (Spotted, Spotless, Baillon's, Buff-banded and Lewin's.)
> > There have also been a few reports of crakes from various places along
> the
> > east coast from people on this list.
> >
> > Is this just an excellent year for crakes and rails generally? I've been
> > figuring that after so many years of drought followed by a few good, wet
> > seasons that there's been a lot of breeding inland. Does anyone know
> about
> > the breeding activity of these groups of birds? Are we seeing dispersals
> > from breeding events inland or locally?
> >
> > Any thoughts or information welcome.
> > ===============================
> >
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list,
> > send the message:
> > unsubscribe
> > (in the body of the message, with no Subject line)
> > to: 
> >
> > http://birding-aus.org
> > ===============================
>
> ===============================
>
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list,
> send the message:
> unsubscribe
> (in the body of the message, with no Subject line)
> to: 
>
> http://birding-aus.org
> ===============================
>
===============================

To unsubscribe from this mailing list,
send the message:
unsubscribe
(in the body of the message, with no Subject line)
to: 

http://birding-aus.org
===============================