Hello everyone,
I have just returned from my annual 2-week stint of bird surveying with a group of 10 volunteers at Newhaven Wildlife Sanctuary (a vast property owned by Australian Wildlife Conservancy 350km NW of Alice Springs). The birds there were just amazing. I haven’t had a chance to work with the figures yet, but there were several times as many birds as last year – which was itself a bumper year. We confirmed three new species for the reserve – White-browed Woodswallow, Red-chested Buttonquail and Square-tailed Kite – but it was just the sheer abundance of the bird life that was so extraordinary. Most remarkable were the many sightings of Spinifexbird in a variety of spinifex habitats. This was a bird we had recorded at only one small old-growth location in 2009 and 2010. Other ‘goodies’ were Freckled Duck, Black-eared Cuckoo, Ground Cuckoo-shrike and one flock (amongst many) of 60 Pied Honeyeaters. Strangely not recorded were Grey Honeyeater, Grey Falcon and Redthroat, but these are always rare species in the area. I am sure the reserve managers Joe and Danae would love to welcome birders to share the current abundance. We encourage those with some experience of outback birds to do some 20-minute surveys at a selected sample of our sites – both for the the benefit of the BA Atlas and for AWC. Danae can give you the details.
Best regards, Richard
Richard Jordan PO Box 449 Bellingen NSW 2454
tel (02) 6655 9456 mob 042 838 5677 richardandroz@wirefree.net.au ===============================
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send the message: unsubscribe (in the body of the message, with no Subject line) to: birding-aus-request@vicnet.net.au
http://birding-aus.org ===============================
