Holiday birding bonanza

Same rules as for Winter 2007 i.e. sightings anywhere within a 250 km radius of Toowoomba, but excluding the local survey area (see below), for the period 1 Sep - 30 Nov 2007.

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Mike McGoldrick
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Joined: Mon Feb 20, 2006 6:08 pm

Holiday birding bonanza

Post by Mike McGoldrick »

During a recent 3 day stay at my brother's property at Tara I was fortunate to record 2 "lifers" - Crimson Chat and Australian Pratincole
In addition, there were huge flocks of Woodswallows ( mainly White-browed but also some White-breasted ) and Tree Martins in the paddocks.
Banded Lapwings were also in abundance on the cultivated paddocks and this was where I spotted the Pratincoles whilst scanning the Lapwing colony - what a lovely aerodynamic bird this is !
The Crimson Chat was a sight to behold,especially the male, resplendent in his stunning "redcoat" livery !
In all a total of 54 species was sighted over the 3 days, from 13/11/07 to 15/11/07 including Spotted Bowerbird, Red-winged Parrot, Singing Honeyeater, White-winged Fairy Wren , Plum-headed Finch and Emu

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Mick Atzeni
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Crimson Chats (Steve Burke)

Post by Mick Atzeni »

Mike

Past member Steve Burke also saw his first Crimson Chats recently. Steve moved up to Mt Isa from Toowoomba and has been adding plenty of lifers. He has hooked up with a couple of local birders and I think he scored 23 lifers on his first outing!

Here's an extract from Steve's email dated 5/12/07
....Went out last Saturday morning with Phil [Venables] to Lake Moondarra but didn’t see an awful lot. Saw some old Aboriginal rock engravings and on an old native campsite I found a beautiful portion of a grinding stone and some evidence of stone flaking in the past. I left it there of course. We had our best sighting right beside the road in some older burnt out spinifex country. We came across a group of about 100 – 120 Crimson Chats feeding and perching on both sides of the road. They’re great little birds with outstanding colour. Another lifer. I also got another couple of lifers. I saw my first Red-backed Kingfisher and a Great Crested Grebe on the lake. I also heard the call of the Blue-winged Kookaburra for the first time. It’s a rather strange when you’ve only ever heard a Laughing Kookaburra.
Michael Atzeni
7 Woden St, Murphys Creek 4352
Mob: 0499 395 485
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