Dear Friends,
Just back from a trip of about 26 days to Central Australia. The main reason for the trip was to allow my wife to see Central Australia, as she had never visited the region before. It was lovely to see the Centre benefitting from so much rain: Alice Springs registered 100mm of rain in July, versus its usual July average of 14mm.
Of course, I wanted to pick up some missing life birds.I missed out on Scarlet-chested Parrot in the area north of Ceduna. I got lucky with Banded Whiteface at the Erldunda site mentioned in Thomas’s book.
I had booked a big 4WD to go to Jupiter’s Well to look for the Princess Parrot.But two recent expeditions have found no recent sightings of the bird there. I did try to hire a Landcruiser Utility to look for it in the eastern Gibson Desert, but the Hire Car Company phoned me the day before to say that the vehicle that tey intended to hire had a fuel pump problem.
We spent a couple of days at Arkaroola on the way home and I tried for the Short-tailed Grasswren. To see this at Arkaroola, the best place is the valley near Smiler’s Lookout on the Ridgtop trail. This is no secret, as the owners will giver this information to anyone who calls. Also the road up is very rough and has a locked gate. We spend the day in the valley and had reasonable looks at four birds. This was about 8 August, and the males were reacting but no responding to tapes of their calls. Not enough response for phoitographs alas. I figure that if anyone were to turn up towards the end of August or early September, the males would be responding.
Dr John Penhallurick
86 Bingley Cres
Fraser A.C.T. 2615
Australia
email:jpenhall@bigpond.net.au
Phone: Home (612) 62585428
Mobile:0408585426
Please visit my website:http://www.worldbirdinfo.net
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