White-naped Honeyeater Behaviour

I was out for a walk in the Perth hills and saw this White-naped Honeyeater feeding on lerps under the leaves. I've seen honeyeaters feeding lots of times before, but this individual had an interesting style of getting the lerps by hanging upside down and then twisting like some Olympian athlete. I think he gets the gold for lerp-feeding!

Don't Mess With Nature

Some pictures I could not resist in posting. If nature realizes how badly we humans are stuffing up the planet and gets organized, we are in trouble.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Remember, be nice to nature!

Raptors of Broome

One of the things you notice when travelling in northern Australia are the large numbers of birds of prey that occur there. Probably due to the warmer climate, wide open spaces and more animals generally, such as reptiles and small mammals.

Most have their preferred habitats, so you get to know which ones you may see where. These are some of the raptors of the Broome region that we saw during our recent trip there.

The Brahminy Kite, basically a bird of coastal areas, especially the mangroves along the coast in northern Australia. This one appears to be going through a moult.

Another raptor of coastal areas and large rivers is the wonderful White-bellied Sea-Eagle. The adult is a beautiful crisp white with a grey back and wings, but this juvenile still has lots of brown on him. Judging by the bulge in his throat, he also has a full crop, so he's doing well.

A common bird of prey that is often found on the dry open plains is the Brown Falcon. They usually swoop down on small animals, but I have also seen these guys running around bushes like chickens, chasing small reptiles.

One of my favourites is this Black-breasted Buzzard, which is usually identified by it's white windows on the wings. This was a young bird being given a hard time by a bunch of annoyed White-breasted Woodswallows, who spent a lot of time diving on his back.

One of the most common raptors of the dry arid regions of Australia, a Black Kite. These guys feed in most habitats and it's not uncommon to see dozens of them riding the thermals high into the sky. Towns, rubbish dumps and sewage ponds are often good places to see them.

Plumed Whistling-Ducks

The far north and part of eastern Australia is home to the two whistling-duck species found in Australia, well now we may have three, as the Spotted Whistling-Ducks from Papua New Guinea is possibly breeding in northern Queensland. The two commonly found whistling-ducks are the Wandering and the Plumed.

These Plumed Whistling-Ducks, were in good numbers at most wetlands in the Broome area in February. They can easily be told from the Wandering Whistling-Duck by the pink bill and legs and the fantastic long plumes on the flanks.

Probably a male and female, as most were paired and calling to each other with their high-pitched whistling calls when alarmed or flying.

Honeyeaters of Broome

Some more photos from my recent trip a few weeks ago to the Broome / Derby area with my cousin Fred. These are some of the many honeyeater species found in the north of Western Australia and all of these pictured honeyeaters can be found at the Broome Bird Observatory.

One of the most common honeyeaters of the area is the Rufous-throated Honeyeater.

With the top end's wet season in full swing, many bird species were nesting or had young, including the Rufous-throated Honeyeaters.

A young Brown Honeyeater, just out of the nest recently.

A fleeting shot of a White-gaped Honeyeater.

One of the largest of the honeyeater group, a Little Friarbird. There are 4 species of Friarbirds which occur in the north of Australia and replace the large Wattlebird honeyeaters of southern Australia.

The mangroves around Broome are home to the small Red-headed Honeyeaters, such as this female.

The male Red-headed Honeyeaters have the beautiful intense red colour on the head.

Images of Koolan

One of the most beautiful and interesting places in WA to do a fauna survey is Koolan Island. I've just returned from a ten day fauna survey during the top end's wet season and wow was it hot and humid. You could not spend ten minutes doing work outside without being totally soaked in sweat.

Due to a very big low pressure system in Northern Territory there were huge thunderstorms over the island every day, during the first five days. One day the island received just under 2 inches of rain in one hour! Not very good when you have pit trap buckets in the ground, many just popped out or started to fill up.  It was interesting to see many reptile species just sitting together without fighting on the refuge rocks and sticks we placed in the buckets.

The flight to Koolan Island is on a small plane from Derby, mostly flying over vast areas of mudflats and mangroves before reaching the islands and ocean.

The wet season in the north turns every thing green and is the best time for wildlife, if you can handle the high humidity due to all the water everywhere.

There are a number of active mining pits on the island. This is one of the old flooded ones from previous years that may be restarted, as the big vein of iron-ore runs along the island through here.

Huge 200+ ton trucks run day and night, but they are stopped during heavy wet season rains when the mine roads turn into bogs. A standard family car would not come half way up one of the tyres on these monsters! There have been a couple of accidents in the mining industry, where huge trucks like these ran over and crushed flat a 4WD (parked in the wrong area) and didn't even notice.

The accomodation on Koolan has more of a resort feel than a mining site. The views from most of the rooms are wonderful.

A view of the survey site. As you can see there's not much flat ground for trap sites and look at all the rock, a hard slog to get pit buckets in, if you can get any in! The soil is usually full of large rocks with most of the plants sending their roots in between. The most commonly caught reptile in these areas was the rock skink ( Ctenotus inornatus). See Koolan Island post October 2009

It was a hard time of year, but I look forward to going back sometime for another survey and maybe I'll bring my fishing rod. I hear there's some great fishing in these wonderful waters, as long as you look out for the sharks and crocs!

Broome Waders

Broome is the best place to see migratory waders in Western Australia, if not the whole of Australia. Recently my cousin Fred and I went for a quick trip to see what new birds we could find, including stories of a rare vagrant Semipalmated Plover the had been seen at the Broome sewage ponds.

Roebuck Bay at the Broome Bird Observatory. The rising tide forces the waders into groups along the shore, often forming huge grey masses in the small sandy bays.

Waders even in large groups are sometimes hard to see among the areas of scattered grey rocks on the seashore.

When high tide hits, which can be over 11 metres, many smaller wader species are forced to shelter on many of the bigger rock islands. This group contained large numbers of Great and Red Knots, Greater and Lesser Sand Plovers, Curlew Sandpipers and Grey-tailed Tattlers, as well as Broad-billed Sandpipers, Grey and Pacific Golden Plovers.

At high tide Bar-tailed and Black-tailed Godwits formed huge groups before flying off to other feeding locations.

Other waders such as Whimbrels, Great and Red Knots also formed their own groups before flying to other areas.

Black-tailed Godwits flying at high tide.

The huge Eastern Curlews dwarf even the larger waders such as Bar-tailed Godwits.

A small wetland north of Broome towards Derby, had a pair of delicate Marsh Sandpipers.

The best view we could get of the Semipalmated Plover at the Broome sewage ponds, was stand on the back of the car and look through a high security fence. The Semipalmated tended to hang around with Black-fronted Dotterels, such as the one on the right.

One of the more common waders of the Broome area, Greater Sand Plover.

 Another of the more common waders, a beautiful Grey-tailed Tattler.

All in all it turned to be a great trip with us seeing a total of 125 species in the Broome/Derby area in five days. Fred supplied all the photos while I took video, which I still have to edit, but that will have to wait as I have another fauna survey in the far north at Koolan Island waiting for me.