Friday, 27 December 2019
Monday, 23 December 2019
ATLANTIC PETREL! Cheynes Beach 22nd Dec 2019
Birding is a wonderful but unpredictable thing. Sometimes you can set off with high expectations and end up with nothing or sometimes, just sometimes you wonder why you're even bothering to go and you strike gold!
Here is the brief story of how I struck 24 carat gold on a quiet Sunday morning. I'd gone down to Albany (on the south coast of WA) for a short getaway from the pre-Christmas anxiety that pervades Perth as this time of year. I told myself "no serious birding, just a quiet relaxing few days, ok?"
It was a lovely quiet weekend and I decided to do a bit of seawatching (I just love seawatching, it's 8 parts pure boredom, 1 part insanity and 1 part stupidity). I walked half an hour, in heat with a few thousand flies for company, to a decent vantage point over the Great Southern Ocean, set my scope up and stared out to sea. The birds were very thin on the ground, with a scattering of Flesh-footed Shearwaters flying west and the occasional Indian Yellow-nosed Albatross effortlessly gliding over the waves. It continued in this vein for about two hours, the battle inside your head goes something like this: "What are you doing here, wasting your time, the flies love you but you're insane. Give up, go back to the car and get a nice cold drink" But there is a part of you that says "Just a little longer, something good will turn up, no pain, no gain! You've spent two hours, so why not 3?"
And then, what's this? A bird flying east (all the others had flown west) quick it's brown but it's got a white belly!!!!! Having seen it through the binoculars I scrambled to find it in the scope but when I did, I couldn't believe it. I was looking at an Atlantic Petrel. Dark brown head, thick chunky neck, white belly/chest, dark undertail, upperparts all brown. Underwing dark, though there was a hint of a pale area in the outer wing when the light caught it. I watched the bird for only a couple of minutes but it seemed like hours. When a rarity comes your way saviour it for it can be a long time till lucky smiles on you again.
Now just wish me luck getting it accepted by BARC (Birdlife Australia Rarities Committee)……..
Here is the brief story of how I struck 24 carat gold on a quiet Sunday morning. I'd gone down to Albany (on the south coast of WA) for a short getaway from the pre-Christmas anxiety that pervades Perth as this time of year. I told myself "no serious birding, just a quiet relaxing few days, ok?"
It was a lovely quiet weekend and I decided to do a bit of seawatching (I just love seawatching, it's 8 parts pure boredom, 1 part insanity and 1 part stupidity). I walked half an hour, in heat with a few thousand flies for company, to a decent vantage point over the Great Southern Ocean, set my scope up and stared out to sea. The birds were very thin on the ground, with a scattering of Flesh-footed Shearwaters flying west and the occasional Indian Yellow-nosed Albatross effortlessly gliding over the waves. It continued in this vein for about two hours, the battle inside your head goes something like this: "What are you doing here, wasting your time, the flies love you but you're insane. Give up, go back to the car and get a nice cold drink" But there is a part of you that says "Just a little longer, something good will turn up, no pain, no gain! You've spent two hours, so why not 3?"
And then, what's this? A bird flying east (all the others had flown west) quick it's brown but it's got a white belly!!!!! Having seen it through the binoculars I scrambled to find it in the scope but when I did, I couldn't believe it. I was looking at an Atlantic Petrel. Dark brown head, thick chunky neck, white belly/chest, dark undertail, upperparts all brown. Underwing dark, though there was a hint of a pale area in the outer wing when the light caught it. I watched the bird for only a couple of minutes but it seemed like hours. When a rarity comes your way saviour it for it can be a long time till lucky smiles on you again.
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| No, this isn't THE bird, this is one I saw in the Atlantic a few years ago |
Now just wish me luck getting it accepted by BARC (Birdlife Australia Rarities Committee)……..
Thursday, 19 December 2019
Lake McLarty 19th Dec 2019: Eastern Yellow Wagtail
My regular trip to the lake was hijacked (but in a good way) when, not long after I arrived, I heard a strange buzzing type call coming from a wet grassy area on the eastern side of the lake. Initially I thought it might be another Red-throated Pipit (I found one at the lake in 1915??) but when I flushed the bird the brief views I got were of a large plain pipit! I racked my brains to remember the calls of the larger pipits, Tawny, Richard's etc but nothing seemed to match. I tried getting views of the bird on the ground but it was very flighty and kept flying into the centre of a large area of typha. The best thing to do seemed to be to record the calls and go from that. After some trial and error (my phone was an early Christmas present) I worked out how to record sound and I set it all up. I pushed into the typha and within seconds the bird flew back over my head calling.
Post Sound recording here
After a few more unsuccessful attempts to view the bird, I decided to return to the car and listen to call the recording and compare to some from the internet. It didn't take me too long to realise that the call was that of a wagtail.
Post Sound recording here
After a few more unsuccessful attempts to view the bird, I decided to return to the car and listen to call the recording and compare to some from the internet. It didn't take me too long to realise that the call was that of a wagtail.
Thursday, 5 December 2019
Lake McLarty 5th Dec 2019: Sharpies, Avocet and a "banded" stilt
Another stifling hot day forecast (39c) so set the alarm for 4:00am and was at the lake not too long after sunrise. Visiting once a week means you can see the changes in the water level. As the lake is quite shallow, a water level drop of only a few centimetres can see the shoreline recede by 10 or 20 metres.
The first change I noticed from the previous week was that the Red-necked Avocet had arrived, a flock of 140 birds were feeding in the southern shallows. they tend to keep to themselves and don't really mix with the Pied Stilts at all.
The numbers of sharp-tailed Sandpipers had risen dramatically with at least 2,000 birds present today. It's really tricky to get an accurate count as you can barely see their heads above the grass, so I wouldn't be at all surprised if the true count was nearer 3,000. In amongst them I picked out Pectoral Sandpipers, Long-toed Stints, Curlew Sandpipers and also some Red-necked Stints (which weren't present last week).
On the return back to the car I noticed a Pied Stilt with an engraved yellow leg-flag.
It turns out that this bird (ABP) was banded in Broome, (northern WA) on February 19th 2019, a distance of just under 2,000km from Lake McLarty.
I had hoped to find a Ruff or even something rarer in amongst the sharpies but no luck today. Just after I left the lake I stopped to check for Brown Songlarks in the fields along the road. As I was watching a singing male songlark I saw a small bird sitting on a branch, it turned out to be a Black-eared Cuckoo, quite a rare bird this far south in Western Australia.
My ebird checklist
The first change I noticed from the previous week was that the Red-necked Avocet had arrived, a flock of 140 birds were feeding in the southern shallows. they tend to keep to themselves and don't really mix with the Pied Stilts at all.
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Red-necked Avocet
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The numbers of sharp-tailed Sandpipers had risen dramatically with at least 2,000 birds present today. It's really tricky to get an accurate count as you can barely see their heads above the grass, so I wouldn't be at all surprised if the true count was nearer 3,000. In amongst them I picked out Pectoral Sandpipers, Long-toed Stints, Curlew Sandpipers and also some Red-necked Stints (which weren't present last week).
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waders in flight
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| Pied Stilt with leg-flag |
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| Straw-necked Ibis flying over the lake |
My ebird checklist
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