Hello
I will have another go at sending this reply using another email address.
To answer Peter¹s query about how plains-wanderers are faring around the Deniliquin district: All of my plains-wanderers sightings are posted on my website¹s Latest News page. It is quite possible that the sighting at the WTP came from northern Victoria but this species can also be found occasionally on the basalt plains to the west of Melbourne. Here in southern NSW plains-wanderers are doing okay. We have not had the broad scale flooding of northern Victoria; we have just had glorious rain. Most of the plains-wanderer nests I knew about would have been inundated in the heavy rain events of November. Some birds were forced to higher ground. Birds re-nested in December but seemed to have fewer chicks than they normally would one or two rather than three or four.
Numbers of adult birds are quite high and many are back in paddocks they have not been in for four or five years. Plains-wanderers are wonderfully resilient and will continue to breed through the autumn and into early winter.
So while the current dense ground cover and occasional inundation is not what plains-wanderers prefer they prefer average years or slightly below average years this year has been a Godsend for them after so many bad years.
Little and red-chested buttonquail and stubble quail are thriving in the current conditions; I saw fifteen red-chested just two nights ago.
Flooding rain beats ten years of crippling drought in this district any day.
Cheers
Philip Maher www.philipmaher.com
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