Monday 29 December 2014

Enraptored

I have been moaning to anyone who will listen [small n] on my inability over the last few years to spot the Brown Falcon leading me to think they had become locally extinct! I used to see them all the time on fence posts and in trees. [Maybe I need to get out more. Maybe I need new specs]

Well, as per my Whipbird saga experience [click here], it never rains but it pours. Got onto four in the last week. Here are images of two. The first decided to check me out when I had stopped on the roadside just near the Holland's Landing turnoff to check the stock trailer I was towing. Flew into a tree about 10 metres away.


The second flew across in front of me into a tree when I was looking at the water birds on the Greening Australia site near Marlay Point.


I went to have a look around Dowd's Morass yesterday afternoon/evening after the big wind had come through. In a paddock next to the road going in I spotted a juvenile Wedge-tailed Eagle and parents. It had a rabbit on the ground. Unfortunately I scared the youngster off its prey by stopping. However, there are plenty of rabbits around at the moment. I am sure it won't go hungry for long.



Once into the morass, I flushed a Brown Goshawk from the side of the track. It obligingly lodged in a nearby tree, in the light from the setting sun, enabling a great set of photos. Notice the "shorter" middle toe compared to a Collared Sparrowhawk. Slater, Morcombe, Pizzey & Knight


Magic. f8 and be there.
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2 comments:

  1. Gouldiae30 December 2014 at 11:57

    Nice set of local raptors you have there Jack. One small correction I can suggest - I don't think that third sentence inside the brackets is correct. (Hope you didn't think I was going to correct a raptor ID!)
    PW

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  2. Jackwin30 December 2014 at 12:35

    Thanks PW. You are correct. My personal Whipbird history isn't a saga really as I wasn't looking for them. They found me!

    Bird ID correction is encouraged. Yesterday during GLIBA, I got 150 Banded Stilts at Holland Landing mis-identified as Black-winged Stilts. My excuses were the 40 kph westerlies blowing straight into my face, the birds being 150 metres away huddled in a group with pelicans, teal, shelduck and my readiness to ID a bird thinking it is was the common species around at the moment [ie B-WS]. Hard to keep a scope still in those conditions. Also saw 350 Avocet!! Plus Sharpies, Red-necked Stint, Little Terns, Caspians, Whiskered, rafts of Hoary-headed. It was magic. No f8 though!

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