… is often the day on our travels when tempers tend to fray. This time it has passed without incident bringing us to Kimba in South Australia’s wheat belt. Established in 1915, population 1,300 it took its name from the local aboriginal word for bushfire. It’s now the home of the big Galah, some silo art and the Kimba Tigers footie team.
Our first day out took us to the Victorian Goldfields for a farewell dinner with some of our good friends there. Gayle and I have an association with the district that stretches back more than three decades. We have never seen it so green in January in all that time …
The next day we crossed the border into South Australia and spent the night at Tailem Bend. The day had reached 38°C but overnight rain cooled the world down considerably.
We made an early start this morning and drove through Adelaide (founded 1836, population about 1.4m about 1.2m of whom have hyphenated surnames.) 77% of South Australians live in Adelaide because most of the rest of the state is covered by salt lakes.
Google tells me that I have 5,978 km ahead of me, 64hours of driving and warns me that my destination is in a different time zone. It’s not the most direct route, that would be via Alice Springs and the Tanami, shorter but not quicker because an enormous chunk of that is not on sealed road. We decided against going up the middle and across the top because that would expose us to the inland heat for much longer and increase the risk of being stranded by flood. Of course we don’t have to go via Albany – there just happens to be a bird there I want to see. From there it’s pretty much due north finishing with a dash up cyclone alley.
Our comfort will depend very much on the weather and the only certainty there is that the Bureau of Meteorology will get it totally wrong.
The story starts with a small and inconspicuous hole in a River Red Gum …
from which the colourful head of a Rainbow Lorikeet emerges …
It’s a tight squeeze …
and there’s limited space on the veranda.
Which won’t stop another one making their debut …
but one of them will have to make way.
I knew they were in there because I saw them go in. Given the size of the hole I was surprised when the first one disappeared. Even more surprised when the second one disappeared. The cavity inside must be bigger than the opening suggests. There may be a nest full of baby lorikeets in there. It was a good five minutes before the adults reemerged.
Here they are again in a gallery that you can run through at bigger scale. Enjoy.
I was born in a big city, I’ve lived most of my life in a big city but me and the big city are not a match made in heaven. I’m currently dagging about in Melbourne looking forward to the day when I can set off home to Broome.
My spell checker is objecting to dagging and some of my non-Australian readers are probably equally mystified – in this context just substitute hanging. It’s complicated. The noun dag refers to the lump of wool and feces that tends to form at the rear end of a sheep, best removed if you want to avoid fly strike. It’s also used, affectionately, believe it or not, for someone who is not smartly dressed or a little odd, your wife or husband may be a bit of a dag. If you’re working you are not dagging about, if you’re bored you probably are.
To relieve the boredom this morning I headed off bright and early to Braeside Park, one of the best places for bird watching in the eastern suburbs. I made a circuit of the main lake. The birding was good.
Long term readers will know that this blog is a strange eclectic mix. I do the research largely to satisfy my own curiosity, the photography because I just can’t help it. Travel, variety, novelty all help to push up the output. When I’m not on the move the output falls off. The blog is not monetised in any way, I just enjoy doing it. That anyone reads it is a bonus … and, amazingly, it does get read. There were 2,591 page views in 2023. And not all of you are my aunts and uncles – the USA and China figure prominently in the readership.
So to all of my readers I say “Thank you” and I wish you all a safe and successful New Year.
I was lucky enough to come across this Great Egret in all its breeding finery the other day. I don’t know whether this is the bride or the groom but the dress is absolutely splendid.
Regular plumage is devoid of the lacework, the bill is yellow and the bare parts of the face are also mostly yellow. You can see this in a photo that I took in WA a few months ago. The remaining photos were taken at Braeside Park, Melbourne, Victoria. The sufficiently obsessed can confirm the ID by looking at the angle of the mouth, it is behind a line dropped from the back of the eye.
non-breeding plumage
Great Egrets nest in trees over water often in association with other egrets, Ibis or cormorants. They lay two to six eggs.
A number of rare birds have shown up in Broome since I went wandering. “How come they only show up when I’m not there?”, I asked. A good friend replied that “They’re there all the time but we only tell you about them when you’re not around.”
One of the current blow-ins is a Black-tailed Gull more at home in coastal China and Japan. It wanders south in the northern winter but rarely as far as Australia. Some parts of the globe are richly endowed with gulls. They are often challenging to identify and some take three years to reach full adult plumage. Their appearance can vary between seasons. In gull rich parts of the world there are keen birders that specialise in gulls. You couldn’t really make a hobby out of them in Oz. We only have three regular species and identifying them is reasonably straight forward. Kelp and Pacific Gulls are large, have black backs and take three years to reach maturity and can be aged reasonably accurately by their plumage as they make that journey. Silver Gulls are smaller, have light grey backs and reach adulthood in one year.
Silver Gulls …
Pacific Gulls …
the red tip to the massive bill extends to the upper mandible, there is a black bar in the tail. The adult legs are a richer yellow colour than Kelp Gulls.
Kelp Gulls …
The bill is less impressive than the Pacific Gull and the red spot is confined to the lower mandible. There is no black in the adult tail. The legs are a washed out yellow.
The bill is the best starting point when deciding which large juvenile gull you’re looking at.
A few months ago this little guy hatched in the Siberian tundra. He or she started feeding themself almost immediately, grew fairly quickly and soon outfitted themself in their first suit of feathers. The parents provided some measure of protection at first but then abandoned it. Our little hero then flew 12,000 km to Australia’s south coast. It weighs about 30g. (Barely more than an ounce for American readers).
Red-necked Stint (juvenile)
When overwhelmed by the need to procreate it will fly all the way back again. What a crazy strategy but it’s one that millions of migratory shorebirds will pursue. Thirty-seven species regularly spend the northern winter in the Australian summer sun.
The route these birds follow is the East Asian Australian Flyway or EAAF for short. There are other flyways in the Americas and Europe to Africa. The birds that do this perform amazing feats of endurance. Read about the Bar-tailed Godwit that holds the record non-stop 13,500 km flight Alaska to Tasmania <HERE>. That tiny Red-necked Stint will overwinter in Oz this year but after that it will do the 24,00 km round trip every year for the rest of its life. And its life span may well be as much as 18 years.
How do we know this? The answer to that is that interested people have caught them and put bands on their legs and caught them again in subsequent years, sometimes numerous times. Scientific bird banding started in Denmark in 1899 when bands were placed on 162 young Starlings. The first recovery of a banded bird in Australia predates that and has nothing to do with science. In 1887 an albatross was found near Triggs Island, Western Australia, with a tin collar around its neck carrying the message “13 naufrages sont refugies sur les iles Crozet 4 Aout 1887′. (13 shipwrecked sailors have taken refuge on the Crozet Islands, August 4 1887). Sadly they perished about a month before the help summoned by their ingenuity reached them.
One drawback of numbered metal bands is that you need to catch the bird to read it. In recent years engraved flags enable birds to be identified in the field. That’s handy for life span studies. Not so handy over the horizon on their long journeys but advances there mean that our 30g stint can now be followed by means of 0.3g geolocator.
I’ve spent the last couple of weeks in Port Fairy on Australia’s south coast and I’ve come across a number of flagged birds. I photograph these when I can and report them, a minor contribution by way of citizen science.
Bird banding is heavily regulated. In Oz it’s by the Federal Government through the Australian Bird and Bat Banding Scheme and it’s to them that you report your observations – online <HERE>. Similar bodies exist in other countries and these too can be found online. A photograph is nice but isn’t essential just a sight record will do. If you come across a dead bird with a band on make a note of the numbers on it and submit that. Use the same form.
The ABBBS will eventually get back to you with a report. The scientist that placed the band will also get details of your interaction. In the case of the Sanderling, the only migratory wader in the gallery above – the other two breed locally, I now know that it was banded at Killarny, Victoria 11 months ago. It was 2+ at the time meaning it was in its second year of life or older (in other words an adult). I found it at Yambuck 26 km away. It may have flown a lot further than that given that it is an adult and there has been a breeding season between banding and sighting. Sanderling breed in the arctic as far north as they can get before finding themselves in the sea.
Many birds can be aged accurately from their plumage in their first year of life, some even into their second or even third year. If a flag is placed on a bird of known age its age at subsequent sightings can be determined. The Pied Oystercatcher was judged to be in its third year when it was banded 12.5 years ago which makes it 15 years old now. It was banded by the Victorian Wader Studies Group 286 km east of where I found it. Long may it prosper.
I haven’t received the report for the Red-capped Plover yet.
It’s impossible to mount an argument for conservation without data. A sighting you make on an ordinary day out is a valuable contribution but only if you submit it.
Not far from Portland, near the western end of Victoria’s coast, you can find a nesting colony of Australasian Gannets on the mainland. All the others are on offshore islands. This one began in 1996 and is the extension of a large colony on the nearby Lawrence Rocks. Seabirds tend to return to their birthplace to mate and there was simply no more room at the inn.
In its first year the colony failed to get a single chick into the adult population. Foxes, feral cats and human disturbance seemed to be the problem so the colony was fenced off. I’ve heard it said that it’s now grown to about 3000 birds and is fairly successful. I doubt the true figure is that high but here’s what it looks like from the carpark. By my count that’s 257 birds but feel free to count for yourself.
An adult drops Into that crowded space with a beak full of seaweed. Building material for the new nest.
I suspect the cement is simply guano. All going well a big fluffy chick will come into being.
The parents will range up to 50km from the nest to bring back food for the youngster. They are spectacular plunge divers. It’s great entertainment when a squadron of gannets gets onto a school of fish.
bobmcgee 