Today I was at the the rapidly disappearing (as in drying out) Kelly’s Swamp, in Canberra, one of a small number of local places where many people have over the past few weeks enjoyed watching all the crakes etc, from which I will extract this bit of text to the cog list:
One Coot was pecking with no great enthusiasm at what might be the decaying remains of a fish (or just some biological flotsam). Another Coot standing a few cm away. The Buff-banded Rail approached between them and began picking little bits of whatever it was, out of the Coot’s beak. This went on about 30 seconds. As in I think 3 times the Coot bent down to shake off a little bit of whatever it was and when it lifted its head the Buff-banded Rail pecked at the bits hanging out the side of the Coot’s beak. The Coots didn’t seem overly concerned and walked off. The Buff-banded Rail continued picking over this bit of whatever it is for another 30 seconds then wandered off. Over the next 10 minutes or so they and several of the Crakes walked past this bit of whatever again and were not interested. They were actively feeding on many other things.
From one of the hides the highest simultaneous count I got to was 8 Spotted Crakes (at least 4 or 5 in view for the whole 30 minutes or so that I was there), as well as two Spotless Crakes and one Buff-banded Rail seen so many times and in so many places that I suspect there were 2 or 3. The Spotless Crakes spend much shorter time out in the open mud than the others and one ran back into the reeds when a Willie Wagtail flew over it.
Philip
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