My First Week Back in Oz

On arriving back in the land of sand and beer, i had to go shopping, for food. I am a domesticated man and I am alone here once again for a while and shopping is the bain of my life, having to go to Woolworths for food about 3 times a week is like having teeth extracted, especially as i am usually suffering jetlag, trying to remember what you need and what you would like and what is critical to watching TV at night. The other thing is trying to get over the jetlag and not being late for work, life is such a busy thing, how do people find time to have affairs, I dont really know, they must have such pncy jobs that skipping away for 3 hours in an afternoon is normal, most guys I know if they had 3 hours free in an afternoon would usually end up in the boozer have a few cold ones. Anyway, back into the groove with work and lack of sleep, my body clock seems to have adjusted OK but was only out by about 4 hours which isnt bad for travelling all this way and skipping 10 time zones. SO I was crashing at 8pm on the sofa and then stumbling into bed at midnight, and then waking up at 3am, not good for feeling OK but at least i was getting all my mail done before I went to work. This last wekeend I went out briding with a retired neighbour of mine, she is a member of the local birdign group and she knows all the nice interesting places around Darwin. We set off at 6am to go to a tiny water hole where the gouldian finches have been seen in good numbers, these birds are not known for breeding in this area so much, perhaps right on the edge of their breeding zone but the theory si that the breeding area is shifting, maybe due to global warming, but these birds are just painted creations, so amazingly colourful and they come in large numbers. We sat for an hour just watching the birds fly in to drink and bathe and we had many successes, for new birds for me anyway.

Gouldian Finches




we travelled to the next spot which was a section of monsoon forest, it looked just like Costa Rica, heavy green foliage and very tall trees, it was close to a spring and had water all year round, only problem with briding in this type of forest is that you cannot see anything, the birds just hide in the trees and you see nothing, you can here them everywhere but see nothing.

We then went and had a picnic at Mistake billabong, a wonderful water hole with a bird hide in the water, we were able to eat out food and watch for birds but the only good one we saw was the White bellied Sea Eagle, a fantastic huge eagle that was just gliding over, maybe looking for food but probably just chillin'.

We then went on to Fog Dam, a man made reservoir, probably not for water collection as it was very shallow but maybe for recreation, which has been amazingly successful. there were 10's of thousands of birds there, just huge number of herons and egrets and spoonbills, the highlight of the day were two different species of harriers, the spotted harrier and Swamp Harrier, these dirdes were gliding about frightening all the other birds as they nornally eat them, they were huge and just amazing to watch

Spotted Harrier




Swamp Harrier




The only problem we had was that the two last birds of prey were so closely coloured that we were arguing about which was which, but what an argument to have. I would like to go back there one day and see if things get better as the dry season gets drier and the bird numbers get more as it tends to concentrate them in the wet areas.
Thanks Lord Buddha for the birds of this world he was very creative.