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| Hooded Plover (Thinornis rubricollis, Lake Pollard, WA, Australia). Image has been cropped and sharpened. |
Thanks to the expert guidance of John Graff I finally caught up with a pair of these fantastic little birds – Hooded Plovers. The 6km (round trip) walk to Lake Pollard was well worth the effort. Also of note were the incredible numbers of Australian Shelduck (2500+) and Black Swans (1500+) on Lake Pollard. These Hooded Plovers take my bird life list to 258.
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| Intermediate Egret (Ardea intermedia, Lake Joondalup, Western Australia). Photograph has been cropped. |
After attempting (and failing) to twitch the White Wagtail at Lake Gwelup, Alan Collins and myself checked out Lake Joondalup for the Intermediate Egret that was reported there. We found the bird relatively easily as it moved about on a large patch of weed/grass. This takes my life list to 257! Interestingly, in the last fortnight or so I have doubled the number of egret species I have seen (*).
* I had actually seen three egrets prior to adding the Cattle Egret and Intermediate Egret (I had forgotten about the Eastern Reef Egret). Thanks Alan!
Here are a few recent (and one not-so-recent) sightings:
The first four birds were seen on a Lake McLarty/Nairns area trip with Alan Collins and John Graff. This takes my life list (Western Australia & Australia) to 256 species. A nice, neat number for a nerd like me…
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| Brown Songlark (Cincloramphus cruralis, near Wongan Hills, WA, Australia). |
With the sighting of a Common Tern at Cape Lambert (identified by John Graff and Alan Collins via a series of photographs) and many Brown Songlarks at Wongan Hills I have finally passed the 250 bird mark for my Western Australia list. I am now on 251.
With the passing of Steve Jobs, I thought it would be a good time to reflect on the impact Apple Computers has had on me. Here is a rundown of my “main computer” Macs. I haven’t included those acquired for my (rather out-of-control) collection.
There are a few anomalies in my birding list. I’m referring to families or groups of birds where I have seen a member that is rare (or difficult to find) yet I am missing “straightforward” members. Here are a few:
I am fortunate to have a group of very talented birding friends: these people are the source of most of my rarities and are fantastic companions when I do get out and about birding. One way or another they are all involved in the “rare” or difficult to find birds in the list above. I’ve just got to search out all the common birds missing on my list now…
Bird number 248 on my life list is a successfully twitched Arctic Tern (Sterna paradisaea) that has somehow found its way to Hillarys Boat Harbour. Arctic Terns are rare visitors here and this particular bird has been hanging around for most of the week. John Graff and I saw it in the late afternoon as it meandered its way around the harbour walls amongst the Silver Gulls. The bird was quite cooperative and performed several close flybys for us before perching on a jetty post.
I took a lot of photographs but the fading light (and weather closing in) has meant that not a lot are very sharp. Thankfully they are good enough for me to convince myself of what I am looking at! Below is the best photograph of a rather ordinary bunch that I took.
Only two more birds to go and I hit the magical 250!
I now have an iPad (iPad 2 16GB/wifi/black to be precise). I am thoroughly impressed. A friend of mine has the first generation equivalent (so I knew roughly what I was getting into). I went with an STM cover as the Apple versions did not protect the back of the iPad (what on earth were they thinking?). The STM cover functions the same as Apple’s with regards to unlocking/locking the iPad.
Once again this event crept up on us: surely 12 months haven’t elapsed since the last exhibition? As usual I attended twice, once with my father-in-law and children on the Saturday and once with a friend (who is also into model railways) on the Sunday. According to the brochure this is the 35th such exhibition.
While the number of exhibitors and vendors seemed the same as previous years the floor space had increased significantly (this year both the Robinson Pavilion and the Silver Jubilee Pavilion were used). This was great news as it made navigating the crowds with small children a little easier. Popular exhibits with the children included anything with Thomas the Tank Engine in it….
My favourite layout by a fair margin was “Avalon”, a British N gauge layout. We saw this layout as a “work in progress” last year and were very impressed. Running were a variety of steam and early diesel locomotives (mostly Graham Farish as far as I could tell).
Another highlight was the “Northern Districts Model Engineering” display. This included a ride-on train that we all enjoyed and some fairly impressive large scale locomotives.