Brahminy Kite – Macquarie Park (northern Sydney) 8 June 2016

Hi all
as I was recovering from my swim this morning and doing some stretches at one end of the Macquarie Uni pool at about 8:20am this morning, all the Masked Plovers and Noisy Miners went off. A raptor could be seen approaching from the south (Epping Road). It wasn’t a Sea-Eagle (too small) but looked like a kite. At first I thought it would be a Whistling Kite, but to my surprise as the bird came closer I could see the clean white head and chestnut wings/body, so very surprisingly (for Sydney) it was an adult Brahminy Kite. I have never seen a Brahminy Kite in the Sydney area before, and they are definitely not common even on the southern end of Central Coast/Hawkesbury River to Sydney’s north.
I wasn’t sure if it was the recently reported Hawkesbury River bird on an excursion or a storm refugee from further north heading home. (The birdline moderator noted that the Brahminy Kite reported from Spencer on the Hawkesbury River has not been seen for over 4 months, so it seems it was another storm front refugee.)
Birding can be so serendipitous – if it had come over about 3 minutes earlier I would still have been ploughing up and down the pool and would probably have missed it
Cheers
Tom Wilson