Parrot hunting

On the road again

Its beginning to feel a bit more like spring and summer now with the mercury getting up into the 30's again. So what to do? Sit in the car with the air-conditioning on and head off for some parrot spotting. The message on the bird sightings website was clear enough and simply read, "If anyone has not seen a Superb Parrot come to Grenfell. The birds are all around the town area." Sweet. Grenfell is only 4 hours drive west of Sydney and with a flock of Swift Parrots visiting the same tree in Penrith every day for the past couple of weeks, a stop to pick them up on the way sounded good.

Super pleasant

I found the tree in Penrith without difficulty and staked it out for an hour or two. No sign of the Swifties though. A walk round the neighbouring streets turned up nothing either. Just as I was leaving a small green parrot with red underwings streaked overhead but was it a Scaly-breasted Lorikeet? Unlikely. But possible and so no tick.

Portrait of a Bearded Dragon

No matter though, Grenfell is currently under siege from a swarm of Superb Parrots so I drove west. I spent a bit of time at a load of reportedly good sites only to come up empty-handed again. The birding was pretty good though with lots of interesting dry country specialists like Red-backed Kingfisher, Babblers, Apostlebirds, Cockatiels and the spectacular, but annoyingly hyperactive, Red-capped Robin.

The spring wildflowers are out

Again I'm pretty sure I saw the Superb Parrots, flying across the road, but pretty sure isn't sure enough. As a result, the list stayed the same and I'm getting a bit disillusioned with this whole twitching nonsense! Should be different next week though as I'm off on holiday for the week. I don't know where yet but its going to be good. Something about returning a campervan to Sydney from some far away place. Its road-trip madness!

Brown Falcon

Crested Shrike-tit

The silliest twitch yet

Road-trip

I have just spent the weekend taking part in my silliest search for a bird so far. A pair of Painted Finches have started nesting next to a creek down in the South Riverina which is a long way southwest from here, close to the Victorian border. Normally these finches live in the very dry interior and even if you can get over there, there's no guarantee that you'll find any as they've got a bit of a nomadic thing going on. As a result, a report of them nesting (meaning they weren't going anywhere) relatively (!) close by was enough to entice me into another road-trip.

Yanko Creek - allegedly home to the Painted Finch

And so it was that by Sunday night, 1500 km and a cracked windscreen later, my list still sat on the same number as it had done on Friday night. And even more upsetting, reports are coming in that the birds were there in their expected spot on both Saturday and Sunday and there's even a picture of one of them taken, I'm guessing, about 20 minutes before I showed up. Gutted!

Its very flat in the South Riverina

At least it was a very pleasant drive with great weather and I also stayed in a lovely country town called Finley which was full of very nice people, but on the birding front it was a disaster. The only sightings of note were Little Friarbird, Yellow Rosella (same species as the Crimson one up here so no tick), an Emu (always nice) and an Echidna (and that's not even a bird). Question is: Do I go back for another try?!

Finley, NSW - a nice place

Coogee to Malabar

Sydney's eastern suburbs looking north

(Bondi on the far right, Coogee on the left)

Its the first day of spring today and strangely its warm and sunny. August was apparently the coldest here for 64 years and it stayed that way right up to the end. It was a pretty dreich weekend but on the Sunday I managed to get out with Jarrod and Allan and we walked down the coast from Coogee to the Malabar headland to see what we could see.

Coastal track

Despite the less than ideal weather, there was little wind and so the pelagic birds were all well out to sea and just little specks soaring over the waves. We did, however, see a few Humpback Whales as they migrate south and I managed to pick up a new bird on the heath at Malabar. Common at home but new to my Australia list, the Skylark #381 is now in the bag. Nice to hear one again and it reminded me of holidays on the machair.

Malabar headland