birding-aus

Dry Spring - NSW North Coast

To: "" <>
Subject: Dry Spring - NSW North Coast
From: tim morris <>
Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2013 11:37:18 -0800 (PST)
Birding  Auser's
Lying in bed and listening to the morning bird chorus and hoping the 
Kookaburra's etc don't wake the kids up is normally how the day starts but for 
the last week the morning birds have been eerily quiet here in Port Macquarie 
on the NSW North Coast . The large flocks of Rainbow Lorikeets that are 
continually harassed up and down the adjacent wet gully by the local goshawk 
have apparently diminished in number and the Koel Cuckoo's that had arrived in 
town don't appear to have stayed. Typically there are at least three male 
Koel's calling constantly near by, but for the last three days...nothing and 
the Cicadabird is also quiet.  
 
I'm not sure if the birds are quiet due to the lack of significant rain for the 
last 5 months, or if the intense hail storm that passed through last week has 
freaked them all out. Hopefully the significant rain forecast to arrive this 
weekend does deliver and the morning bird chorus recovers with it.
 
Bushfires are the other feature of the dry weather and the "Brushy Mountain 
Complex" fires of ~9000ha has been burning in the Port Macquarie / Kempsey 
hinterland for over a month now. This fire is burning in the Werrikimbee 
National Park which is an Important Bird Area due to the population of Rufous 
Scrub Birds present.  Brushy Mountain after which the fire is actually named is 
one of the main population sites for the Scrub Birds and again, hopefully, the 
forecast rain does arrive before much more of that area is torched. 
Unfortunately even if the rains put out the fire it could be months before 
access is available to the area due to a large landslide that has closed the 
Hastings Forest Way, which is the main access road to the site.
 
Tim
===============================

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
===============================

<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>
  • Dry Spring - NSW North Coast, tim morris <=
Admin

The University of NSW School of Computer and Engineering takes no responsibility for the contents of this archive. It is purely a compilation of material sent by many people to the birding-aus mailing list. It has not been checked for accuracy nor its content verified in any way. If you wish to get material removed from the archive or have other queries about the archive e-mail Andrew Taylor at this address: andrewt@cse.unsw.EDU.AU