Ashmore Reef, October: Part 1

Ashmore Reef is a small cluster of sand banks about 150 km south of West Timor, 850 km west of Darwin and 650 km north of Broome. It is made up of West Island, the largest island with some large bushes around the perimeter and two Coconut Palms; Middle Island and West Island, both of which have some low vegetation of grass and woody herbs; and then a few sand bars that barely get above high tide mark.

Trip Map – with thanks to Google Earth

The islands and the surrounding waters are a protected Nature Reserve and access requires a number of permits. The only inhabitants are the residents of three or four small graves of Indonesian fishermen, under the Coconut Palm on West Island, and the crew of the Australian Customs and Border Patrol ships that are moored there permanently, on watch for any "illegal immigrants" who attempt to enter Australia by boat from Indonesia.

Being rescued on our way to see the Little Ringed Plover

Australian birders have been visiting the islands for many years, normally aboard the 20 metre Flying Fish V, and due to the wonderful work of the trip organisers we usually have all the permits, even one to land on the restricted East Island. The attraction is that birds migrating to Australia from Indonesia, or those that are lost or are just touring vagrants often land on the islands for a rest

Little Ringed Plover through the heat haze

Little Curlew

An Ashmore trip is exciting from beginning to end. First you need to plan how to get to Broome. There are one or two direct flights and many more that get you there via places you weren't planning to go to, like Perth or Darwin.

Grey Falcon, a very rare raptor and even more rare in the Broome area

Once you arrive you have a choice of up-market motel-come-resort or .... you can stay at the Roey! The Roey, The Roebuck Bay Hotel, goes back to the early years of last century and whilst it has been modernised it still has that outback, 1950s, country pub feel, and it is the cheapest.

Wilson's Storm Petrel

Matsudaira's Storm Petrel

Then the trip starts. There is one long jetty in town BUT the tides are massive, up to 10 or 12 metres, and there is very little fun in climbing 10 metres down a slippery steel ladder come stairway, with luggage, and then trying to step onto a small boat. The jetty is pretty much reserved for commercial shipping anyway and there is a charge to use it, which the tour boat operators don't want to pay. So we get the pleasure of wading out to Flying Fish Five's (FFV) tinny with all our gear, then riding for five or so minutes out to the FFV where she waits at anchor.

Swinhoe's Storm Petrel

FFV is about 20 metres long and you get a choice of accommodation, if you are first on board. You either get to share an air conditioned cabin below, or, you get a wind cooled bunk on deck and share with everyone until they go to bed. I grabbed a bunk on deck because when I go to sleep I sleep, you could drive a truck past me and I wouldn't know, and because on deck when you wake in the middle of the night the stars are right there, so close and bright, especially when it is new moon as it was for us.

Flesh-footed Shearwater

Once under way the trip to Ashmore gets, for me, even better. It is a three day pelagic trip from Broome to the islands!! How good is that!! Three days of storm-petrels, petrels, shearwaters and boobies!! For a pelagic-tragic it rarely gets better. The excitement starts immediately and by the time the sun sets we have ticked off Swinhoe's Storm Petrel as well as some of the more common birds like 70 +/- Streaked Shearwater and 30 +/- Wilson's Storm Petrel.

Abbott's Booby

Masked Booby

Brown Booby

Not everyone enjoys sea trips as much as me though and some conversations each morning were hilarious, for me, because I rarely suffer from seasickness. People would come up on deck, wish each other good morning and then ask "what did you take?" Replies were assorted and quickly commented on "I had a blue and a red"; "A red? huh! reds are just placebos, what you need is a purple, take a purple, here have one of mine"; "no, blue and red work great, and if I need a bit more I have a pink". "No, purples are the only ones, here, have one, what about a patch? Are you wearing a patch?" "Yeah, look" .... and so the conversation about seasick pills went, every morning.

Flying Fish don't "fly", they glide on long fins. They get propulsion by lowering the tip of the tail fin into the water and wiggling it really fast

..... and when they get frantic they can really move fast.

Day two continued in the same vein as day one with Tahiti Petrel, Bulwer's Petrel and all the rest, capped by a very special arrival, an Abbott's Booby. Abbott's Boobies live and breed in only one place in the world, on Christmas Island, and that is about 1,000 km to our west! It is only recently, thanks to these annual Ashmore trips, that people have realised how far they travel to feed.

Sunset over a calm sea

Day three on this trip turned up another surprise. We woke to a truly glassy sea and a wind of 5 knots or less and there, floating on the water were vast rafts of Swinhoe's Storm Petrels. We counted nearly 500 birds across the various rafts and smattered amongst them were our first Matsudaira's Storm Petrels and a few Wilson's-type Storm Petrel.

I didn't know it at the time but there were newsworthy sunspots occurring while we were away, and here they are,

All images & text © Jenny Spry

White-headed Stilt at the WTP

With spring in the air the White-headed stilts at the WTP are feeling frisky in the cool of the morning. I don't know if this was a pair doing a courtship display or two males expressing their macho feelings but whichever the display was very elegant.

To begin, the two birds came shoulder to shoulder and strutted for about 5 metres with the black feathers on their necks held erect ...

one bird then turned away and the second bird followed and a short, synchronised flight followed ...

staying close they flew a few metres ....

and landed close together just a metre or so from where they took off ...

they then turned their backs on each other and did a wonderful synchronised jump and wing display ...

followed by more more prancing ... 

and close flight ....

that finished in one last jump-and-follow routine before the birds separated and returned to feeding.

The whole display lasted about 1 minute.







All text & images © Jenny Spry

Spring is here and the Waders are back

Newly returned Sharp-tailed Sandpiper still with some breeding plumage

Spring is here! The days are getting longer and warmer (it is 24ºC as I type), leaf-buds are swelling on the trees, flowers are in bloom and, best of all – the waders are returning to the Western Treatment Plant. It is time to shrug off the winter blues and get out for some serious birding.

Red-necked Stints and Curlew Sandpipers at the tide line in front of the hide

Curlew Sandpipers, some showing a little breeding plumage

Brolga preening at the Western Lagoons

Portrait

Last Friday morning I met Marlene beside the "T" Section pond where the Banded Stilts and Marsh Sandpipers were hanging out and we spent the day enjoying the gorgeous weather. How nice it is to go birding with a friend, chat, drink cups of tea and ooh and aah at the newly returned waders, and of course the WTP residents in all their courtship finery.

Newly returned Whiskered Tern

Great Crested Grebe having a bad hair day

Blue-billed Duck, coots and teal

Mother swan giving her family of swanlettes lessons in swimming with one leg tied behind their back

It is also great fun to try and pick out the vagrant, the rarity or the otherwise unexpected from amongst the thousands of newly returned waders. The vagrants and rarities eluded us but to find a pair of Caspian Tern standing in the drying puddle at the "T" section was definitely unexpected.

The Caspian Terns on the "T" section lagoon

Regarding an earlier post about the colour of corvid's legs being yellow/cream rather than black, I had three theories given. (1) It is possible that the colour changes as the birds age. (2) It could be health or diet related and (3) The legs are coated with dirt or sand from their desert environment. I don't know the answer so I will try and find more instances and better photos.

I have also had another report of Welcome Swallows feeding on larvae from beneath the water surface, this time on a farm dam on the east coast of the Fleurieu Peninsula in South Australia. This is a long way west of all other reports but is still, just, on the northern edge of Bass Strait. All other reports have been on the Tasmanian or Victorian coasts of Bass Strait.

All images & text © Jenny Spry

Nhill July 26th – 28th July

Usually we leave early for a weekend in Nhill because it is a drive of about 4 hours from Melbourne. This time we couldn't get away until about 11 am, and even then had to go back for a pair of sunglasses. Then, when we did finally hit the freeway to Ballarat, there was a massive traffic jam. Joy checked the internet on her phone (one day I too will buy a smart phone and learn how to use it) and  found out that there were road works AND a bicycle race – the traffic jam was 0 to 20 kph and over 20 km long!! We took a side road and past the worst of it but we were way behind schedule, we thought.

Malleefowl

Once past Ballarat the traffic did free up but by the time we got to my favourite pie shop in Ararat it was closed so lunch for me was a scratch job of what I had in the car, not much. Then, by the time we got to Dimboola it was getting late in the afternoon and we decided we had to moderate our plans for birding before we got to Nhill. All in all it was becoming a bothersome drive.

Malleefowl

We did, however, take our normal longer "short cut" from Dimboola to Nhill. We do this by turning off the highway and onto Coker Dam Road, just after Dimboola. This road parallels the highway but lets you dip into the top of the Little Desert along the way. It is also a road that is much better for birding than the highway.

Sunrise through the fog, Nhill – Harrow Road

Dusky Woodswallows huddled in the 3º C foggy cold

Crested Pigeon sunning on the fence

Along this road we found out why the Birding Goddess had delayed us; just after turning on to the Kiata South Rd we slowed down because there were two suspicious brown lumps on the road a couple of hundred metres ahead. We put the binoculars on the lumps and they turned into two Malleefowl. Not only were they Mallefowl but they seemed to be used to traffic and allowed a reasonably close approach. Our trip had obviously been delayed by the Birding Goddess so that we would arrive at this spot just as the Malleefowl came out for their evening roadside snack (smile).

Purple-crowned Lorikeet 

The next morning, Sunday, was cold with a heavy fog that didn't totally burn off until about midday. This made birding slow as most birds seemed to be huddled up waiting for the sun. We headed to our favourite spot that is a track that goes off the Nhill – Harrow Road just at the south edge of the Little Desert Nature Lodge. It is a good track to walk and most of the local birds can be found in the heath, over the farmland or in the stands of woodland bordering the track.

Eastern Rosella

Hooded Robin

In the afternoon we headed north of Nhill to Yanac and Millers Road where Australian Bustards had been reported. We chatted to a local farmer who told us that they are always in the area and seen in ones and twos but each year, usually in early to mid July they chose a local paddock and can be seen in groups of 20 or 30. We didn't see any but are planning to go back next June.

Little Eagle

Mulga Parrot pair

Female looking for a nest cavity

Male – the female was inside checking out the hole

Broken Bucket Tank

Sunset over the southern edge of the Big Desert

On Sunday we had to get home at a reasonable hour so headed south on the Nhill – Harrow road, with a few birding stops along the way, then over to Horsham to visit with our friend the Bush Stone-curlew. It took a while to find him, or her, but sadly we also found the well-picked skeleton and part of the wing of a second bird. It is just a small bush reserve in the middle of town with lots of people and dogs off lead so it is to be expected, but it was sad to see.

Bush Stone-curlew

All text & images © Jenny Spry

Australian Corvids with Yellow Feet

These four images show three species of Australian corvids with yellow feet. Having checked the reference books, including HANZAB, I can not find any written reference to yellow feet or yellow soles of feet. The closest mention is that HANZAB notes that the soles of Little Crow feet are "... described as pale".

In looking at the Simpson & Day field guide it does seem to show that corvids have yellow soles to their feet but in many years of observing I have not noticed it before.

Maybe all other birders know about the feet colour in Australian corvids but I found it an interesting sighting and am planning to do a bit more searching on the matter – and definitely take much more interest in the corvids when I see them.

Aus Raven taken at Nhill, Victoria. July 2014

Aus Raven taken at Nhill, Victoria. July 2014

Little Raven © Marlene Lyell. January 2010

Torresian Crow © Marlene Lyell. September 2010