Dowitcher trip

Hi all, Here’s how the Great Dowitcher Twitch went for me. I heard about it on Monday and by 1600 I had arranged to go up with friends and we left my place at 0430 Tuesday. After a frantic four-hour drive filled with the excitement of seeing such a rare bird and the fear it had already left we arrived at the lake. Of course the sighting had to be filled with stress. We arrived at the north end of the lake where it had been seen the day before and joined a few people staring at a few common waders – no Dowitcher in sight!! Then a phone call from the south end of the lake, the bird had been found – a mad dash along the dirt track on top of an irrigation channel BUT, the bird had flown, we “should have been there 10 minutes ago”, that age old birding curse. A nervous group of birders, now about 14 people, huddled around scopes for half an hour in the cold morning wind looking at where the bird had been and willing it to emerge from behind a pelican or stilt. Another phone call! The bird’s at the north end! A convoy of 6 cars dash wildly back along the irrigation channel and stop, people fall out of cars and creep toward a small group peering into scopes. There it is, a sigh of relief from all and lots of relieved laughter. Quite the mega-twitch. To finish the day off we pulled into a small dust track beside the river at Kerang and there we found a small family of Grey-crowned Babblers, a bird rarely seen anywhere near Kerang, a real surprise. cheers Jenny http://jenniferspryausbirding.blogspot.com.au/