Holiday twitch

Silver Gull

New Holland Honeyeater

Well, my parents arrived in Australia on Friday evening and what better thing to do on your first day on holiday than to twitch a super rare American vagrant. A strange looking Golden Plover has been hanging around on a rock platform near Kurnell for a couple of months now. They say its strange looking but in fact its pretty much exactly the same as all the local Golden Plovers. The experts will tell you that its primaries are slightly longer, its legs are slightly shorter and as the local ones moult into their beautiful golden breeding plumage, it appears slightly greyer. Anyway, with a mounting pile of photographic evidence, the call was made last week that this is indeed the second ever record for Australia of an American Golden Plover #388.

The twitch is on!

This didn't excite me much until I realised that since my bird books were published, the American Golden Plover has recently been split from the Pacific Golden Plover and is now considered a full species.

What the fuss was all about - impressive!

As a result, Jarrod joined me and my folks and we headed down to the sea and ticked it off without any trouble at all. No better cure for jet-lag than a solid bit of twitching.

Bull Ant

Funnily enough we met Allan down at the rock platform. He doesn't do any birdwatching so what a coincidence that he turned up at that particular place at that particualr time. I'd almost say bizarre!

Wee dragon