Dubbo twitch

Red-rumped Parrots - Male (top) and female

Firstly, my apologies for not keeping things appropriately updated. There has not been a great deal going on here recently but with the warmer weather upon us the snorkeling is beginning again. There seem to be a lot of octopuses about at the moment.

Too late! Dried up pond

A few weekends back I heard about a Painted Snipe living in a small pond in Dubbo. Although widespread, they are rare and so to hear about one in a little pond with nowhere else to go presented a fine twitching opportunity. Dubbo is 400 km west of Sydney and so a good spot for a weekend away.

Eastern Rosellas showering under a leaky pump

When Emily and I arrived at the little pond, however, it had dried up and the bird had obviously moved on. We must have only missed it by a day or two at the most. We checked out the local wetland reserve which would have been a much more sensible place for the bird to be living in the first place and as the sun went down, I flushed a snipe from the edge of a pond. No tick this trip though as I'm pretty sure it was just the common Latham's Snipe.

Mount Panorama, Bathurst

On the way back to Sydney we took a spin round the Mount Panorama racing circuit in Bathurst which is the Mecca for Australian petrol-heads. They've put speed cameras all around the place though so one has to behave!

A different way to get down the mountain