NT Birding

We are back from Darwin and the NT after a full on birding holiday, 4 new lifers - Red Goshawk, Hooded Parrot, Large-tailed Nightjar & Masked Finch. We recorded 123 bird species, basically in 5 days.

We first headed for the small old mining town of Pine Creek, about 200 km south of Darwin to look for our main target, Hooded Parrots.

No luck at town, even the local haunt of Copperfield Dam had no

Hooded Parrots.

A lone Yellow-bellied Flycatcher watchs our quest.       

 

We stay for a few days at Katherine and searched lovely pandanus-lined creeks at Edith Falls for parrots

 and hopefully our other target the Red Goshawk, but no luck.

The wonderful Katherine Gorge also didn't have out targets, but 

at Mataranka we did get our Red Goshawk.                               

The last possible morning for our Hooded Parrot quest found us

up well before dawn to travel the one hour back to Pine Creek.

We scanned the Water Gardens.................and finally got them!

This was our wonderful Hooded Parrots target.            

We saw a beautiful gold-winged male and his female.       

  

Only hours before our flight home, we stopped at the Darwin Botanic Garden to look for the local Rufous Owl there, but the only owl we found was this metal one!