From September to November each year millions of migratory shorebirds are making their way south to Australia from their breeding grounds in North Asia, Japan, Siberia and Alaska. Their flight path is the East Asian-Australasian Flyway: a massive aerial highway marked by prevailing winds and driven by a wonderful behavioural trait known as “site fidelity”.
I LOVE Crested Terns. Their sleek, clean black, white and silver plumage, teamed up with bright yellow bills makes for a beautiful sight, especially when they’re in a tight roost. Their courtship antics are fascinating and highly engaging, including: wing drooping and circumambulation; offering captured fish and; aerial duetting. These are unforgettable sights for anyone [...]
I’ve birded some sites which are pretty iconic in terms of bush birding in Australia. These include: Chiltern Forest (Vic), Larapinta Trail (NT), Nourlangie Rock (NT), Lawn Hill (Qld), Bladensburg NP (Qld), the Piliga (NSW), Washpool NP (NSW), Dorrigo NP (NSW), Mornington Sanctuary (WA), Capertee Valley (NSW), Gross Valley (NSW), practically the entire Simpson Desert, [...]
It’s been a pretty big couple of weeks for me. My trip to Roebuck Bay delivered a bunch of rarities and rare vagrants, including a second Australian record. You always expect a rarity or two when you visit the Broome region – its situation in the broader geography and the structure of the vegetation and [...]
It’s always interested me how each year a couple of species of plants seem to enjoy a flowering abundance which overshadows the efforts of all other species. So far this year, the prize on the Northern Beaches of Sydney has to go to the Red Bloodwood (Eucalyptus gumifera). So profuse has the flowering of these [...]
A vagrant American Golden Plover is currently on Merries Reef at Boat Harbour. The Birds Australia Rarities Committee (BARC) has not yet declared it so but judging from the over 100 people who have turned up at Boat Harbour in the last few days all keen to tick it no matter what, the vox populi [...]
IT WAS AN EXCITING TIME for me at Boat Harbour yesterday. The morning (low tide) survey was amazing, with tens of thousands of shearwaters moving in massive flocks on the horizon, large flocks of Kelp Gulls (well for me anyway – dozen at a time) and plenty of shorebird activity. It appears that our Little [...]
The Great Knots did the right thing today and made an encore visit to Boat Harbour – and I had my camera this time. They spent most of the time I was there, around an hour, foraging. The tern diversity was excellent on the reef today, with plenty of Crested Terns, Little Terns (breeding, non-breeding, juvs and immatures), Common [...]
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