Dear Birders, I thought I had missed my opportunity to twitch the Forest Wagtail that was first reported from Alice Springs in early may when there had been no recent news of it. A recent blog from Chris Watson noted as an aside that the bird was still there. There were some award flights to the Alice on Monday so I headed off after checking that the was accommodation at the B&B where the bird has taken up residence. With award flights one has to take what is available and in this case it went from Sydney to Alice Springs via (who would believe it) Cairns! On arrival at Anne and Will’s B&B Will showed me into the back garden and sat me down in the shade to wait for the birds intermittent passage through the garden. Within 5 minutes the Forest Wagtail was doing its characteristic horizontal tail wag as it moved purposefully around the garden. It leapt up onto a small plant and hopped down with a large green caterpillar which it proceeded to devour avidly. A little later an injudicious moth landed beside the bird and was promptly devoured. After feeding actively for bout 15 minutes it then spend a similar period of time preening itself on the garden steps about 3 meters from me until a White –plumed Honeyeater swept down on the Wagtail and drove it away. I did not see it again that afternoon – though it must be said that much of that time was spent on a visit to the Alice poo farm . On Tuesday morning the bird appeared at around 8:00 and stayed for around an hour until again driven away by aggression from a White-plumed Honeyeater. While present the Wagtail did circuits of the garden including walking along a concrete path no more than a meter from where I was watching it. It seems very comfortable where it is but one can only assume that it will reverse its migration route reasonably soon given the changing seasons.. regards Peter Marsh =============================== 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 ===============================