birding – Page 8

One More River …

Kununurra to Manbulloo Homestead – 481km.

It was the Croc Motel in Kununurra that was pet friendly. It was also clean and comfortable although there was a faint aroma of damp. The units are arranged around a courtyard where someone is doing much better with their Heliconias and ferns than I am in Broome.

Given that today would be somewhat shorter we took time to go birding in the Celebrity Tree Park on the banks of Lake Kununurra. Very enjoyable. Best bird goes to Comb-crested Jacana with Tawny Frogmouth a close second.

Then onward ever onward. Still Highway 1 but now called the Victoria Highway. That part of the Great Northern that we traversed yesterday and the Victorian together form part of the Savannah Way – I think we are overdoing the names here. But, anyway a new day, a new state, a new time zone and a new speed limit. Northern Territory, clocks forward one and a half hours (yes, Central Australian time is a bit weird. I haven’t encountered anything but whole hour shifts any where else.) and the beast could now be unleashed at 130kph (80mph) if you dared on a narrow, wet, flood affected surface.

The rain began around lunch time and continued on and off for the rest of the day. There were waterfalls coming off the escarpments in fairly spectacular fashion and the rivers were up. Plenty of water about.

Two important rivers are behind us now, the Fitzroy on day one and the Victoria today. In recent years both of these have flooded causing delays that lasted weeks. It’s good to have seen them in the rear view mirror.

Manbulloo Homestead is on the Katherine River and the birding is good. Tomorrow is a big day, long way to go, so there will be little time to enjoy it here. Must come back.

All is set for a classic day three tomorrow.

A New Year …

I do wish you a happy and trouble free 2025.

Bird watchers around the globe have been out chasing a big day to get their year list off to a good start. Me too. I was introduced to a competition of sorts by birders on Townsville Common. It’s simple. Your list has to be bigger than the number of days elapsed in the year. Easy at first, it gets tougher as you get deeper in the year. When you fall behind you’re out. I call it the Calendar Game and play just against myself. I have lost every year since the Big Panic changed my travel habits.

So on the first of the new year I got ahead of January and February. I have a road trip coming up so the list should move along well for a while.

While having a look at Broome’s Entrance Point a couple pulled up near me and asked, had I seen it? Not only had I not seen it, I didn’t know what it was. They’d found it on the oval in town and alerted the bird watching community. I was the last birdo in town to reach the oval … not long after it had gone. The alert had come through on my watch, which was at home charging.

It was a gull. It had been very happy to hang out with other gulls especially around anybody who looked like they had food. Next stop all the other places that I knew gulls congregated starting with Town Beach …

Americans will be wondering why the fuss? A Laughing Gull, so what?

It’s the first record for WA and new for my Australia list. Thank you Clare and Grant.

Singapore, A Garden City …

For such a densely populated place Singapore is remarkably green. Water and sunshine obviously help, but there has been a deliberate policy that nature should not miss out completely in the scramble for land. And it hasn’t. There are birds, mammals and reptiles in parks and gardens that are big enough parcels to sustain them. Yes, the glass is not full but don’t think of it as half empty.

In six days I visited ten parks and gardens. They were all worth visiting. My main interests are birds and wildlife so let me rate them with that in mind. (Gardens by the Bay is unmissable for different reasons). I’ll list them below the photos for any one planning a visit themselves. There are two groups – my favorites and the merely marvelous.

Favorites

Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve
Singapore Botanic Gardens
Jurong Lake Gardens
Dairy Farm Nature Park

Silver Medalists

Fort Canning Park
Gardens by the Bay
Hindhede Nature Park
Pasir Ris Park
Mount Faber Park
Punggol Waterway Park

Rain delayed play …

Last full day in Singapore, 7 am, and it’s raining. And boy, does it know how to rain. We have been lucky. Most mornings have been dry, afternoons not so much. Only once have we been soaked to the skin despite our umbrellas. Rain, of course, is the reason the city state is so green.

The birding has been fascinating. Forest birding is always tough, throw in the lack of familiarity with Asian birds and the list takes a while to grow. On the other hand novelty always adds spice. Here is a taste, more when I get home and start editing …

A Common Rarity …

Spring has sprung and the migratory waders are back in Roebuck Bay. These are birds that breed in the far north of the northern hemisphere taking advantage of their short summer period of great abundance. The abundance is so great that the hatchlings feed for themselves. That’s a great saving in effort for the parents but at the expense of a long flight to escape the coming winter and capitalise on abundance elsewhere.

In those species that breed across a range of latitudes those that breed furthest north generally winter further south than those that breed in the southern part of their range. This leapfrog pattern of migration appears to have been brought to science’s attention by J A Palmén as long ago as 1874. One particularly good example of this is the Common Ringed Plover Charadrius hiaticula. Those that breed in southern Sweden or Britain winter in southern Europe whereas those breeding in the arctic mostly take the trip to Africa.

Mostly, but for the last three or four years a single bird has been turning up a stone’s throw from the Broome Bird Observatory in Roebuck Bay. This is presumably the same individual which must make it a leapfrog champion. There have been sightings of Common Ringed Plover further south but they are decidedly rare here in Oz.

I caught up with the Roebuck regular last week …

Parry’s …

Kimberley 24.5

The stops so far have been one night stands – way points with benefits. Parry’s is a destination.

Broome has no duck pond in the park and no sparkling brook to walk beside. Just as Eskimos have many words for snow Australians have numerous endings for the phrase that starts with “as dry as …” mostly impolite. Except when it’s flooded Broome is as dry as any of these things. Parry’s Lagoon is a different story.

Parry’s Creek Farm is near the small town of Wyndham. It’s surrounded by the Parrys Lagoon nature reserve and unlike the nature reserve is dog friendly. It is a favourite destination and the first stop where we stayed a few days. If the word resort conjures up a vision of Piña Coladas (whatever they are) from the swim up bar forget it. But there is a pool, also a restaurant which serves a good meal. The service was excellent.

In the reserve you can visit Telegraph Hill for some WW2 history and some nice Boabs. Then continue to the bird hide at Marlgu Billabong to boost the bird list.

There is a smaller billabong on Parry’s Creek Farm as well. It is surrounded by a small patch of rain forest. Some pleasant walks radiate from the camping area with more wildlife watching potential.

Up next. Nightfall brings a new suite of possibilities …

Twitch …

I received the message at about 10.30 am yesterday. A White Wagtail at Ardyaloon Water Treatment plant. Broome to Ardyaloon is a mere 217 km. White Wagtail was a familiar bird in my English youth. I have over 80 records of the species from Iceland, continental Europe, the Russian far east, India and Japan but it was not on my Australian list. It doesn’t routinely occur here although vagrants do turn up from time to time. By 1 pm I was looking at it.

It was a busy bird, not easy to find as it meandered among rocks at the water’s edge. Gayle found it first. It was an Oz tick for her as well. Fortunately it didn’t fly before I saw it too. It was a lifer for the dog.

I might have got a better photograph if I wasn’t restrained by a chain link fence, but hey.

A number of subspecies have been described. This guy is a male Motacilla alba leucopsis. This subspecies breeds in China.

I have always enjoyed the thrill of adding a new species to a major list but this event really qualifies as my first twitch. During my working life I could not afford the luxury of dropping everything and rushing off to see a distant rarity. I hope to do it again soon.

Roebuck Bay …

One of the features that make Broome famous is the sheer number of migratory shorebirds that visit Roebuck Bay. The big tides and extensive mudflats make it the best wader watching site in the country. Many of our visitors are getting ready for the long flight to their breeding grounds in the high latitudes of the northern hemisphere. Their priority is to feed up big to fuel the journey.

Over the next month a huge number will go but the bay will not be empty. There will still be any number of resident shore birds plus the younger birds of some migratory species that wait a year or two before making their first trip back to Siberia.

The bay is home to a number of birds that live and feed along the shore. Some are in the same order as the migratory waders, the Charadriiformes, but there are herons and egrets as well.

Albany …

Because we made good time across the Nullarbor we have had four nights in the Great Southern region of WA. The first was on the edge of the Sterling Range National Park and then three on the Kalgan River just outside Albany. The birding has been excellent, Two Peoples Bay and Lake Seppings especially. My target species was Western Whipbird and, once again, I managed not to see it. Regional endemics such as Red-capped Parrot and Red-eared Firetail have been easier to find but not prepared to pose for me. Here are some of the photographic highlights …

Our decision not to travel north via the Stuart Highway then west through Fitzroy Crossing was a good one. Flooding has closed roads in a number of places and it will be a while before they reopen. Not that we are completely out of the woods. Our intended route was closed by fire a day or so ago near Newman. That problem is solved – the road is now closed by flood. Hopefully that will soon reopen. No cyclone brewing off the west coast presently. We head north tomorrow, only 2000km to go.

Day 8 …

We made good progress on the Eyre Highway. Kimba is very much a wheat growing area. The next sizable town is Ceduna on the coast. It has a more mixed economy. Going west from there you encounter a few more small wheat growing towns until at Penong you find a store that declares that it’s the last shop for a thousand kilometers.

The mallee woodland slowly peters out until you’re on the treeless plain that is the Nullarbor. There is practically no surface water out there partly because not a lot of rain falls but also because the limestone lets it all run straight through. In the summer of 1841 Edward John Eyre set out to walk from Fowlers Bay to King George Sound – the modern day Albany which is just down the road from where we are camped on the bank of the Kalgan River. He covered the 1368 km trip in about 5 months, five men set out, two arrived.

Eyre found water at Eucla. The modern day traveler finds a quarantine inspection site. The rules are complicated but basically fruit, vegetables, honey and soil can’t go with you into Western Australia.

From there west the landscape changes back into patchy woodland, then the trees become taller and more continuous and, once you’re off the Eyre Highway you enter wheat country again.