Oriental Pratincole over-load !

After coming back from a wader count at 80 Mile beach, where 500,000 Oriental Pratincole had been counted, the team encountered 60,000 on Roebuck Plains. So a few days later i went to have a look and arriving on the plains we easily picked up the flocks wheeling around in the sky some incredibly high but starting to come down closer and finally coming in low to land.

With a few raptors around the flocks gathered into tight groups and circled around and around in huge numbers.

Grasshoppers that the Oriental Pratincole were feeding on in plague proportions.

The pratincole after hawking insects high, and avoiding predators started coming into roost and landing in the tussocky grasslands of Roebuck Plains.

A closer shot of the thousands of pratincole coming into roost

Once the sun was setting the birds left what we thought would be the roost site and heded out low over the grassland hawking for insects like nightjar.

The kids are in Town !

Nest site of Australasian pipit out on the plains

Australiasian Pipit chick- there are three in there honest !

Bnading three Australiasin Pipit chicks

Nik ringing a Paperbark Flycatcher chick

Paperbark Flycatcher chick in its delicate nest woven from spiders webs and grass decorated with bits of leaves.

Paperbark Flycatcher nest quite exposed but blends in perfectly with the branches of the Mother-in-law tree.

And there is the little fella - all head and no tail yet !

All the chicks are really showing up around the site now, this Rurouf Whistler juvenile turned up in the nets.

As did the Rufous Throated Honey eater juvenile - no rufous throat although some adults do not have a coloured throat either, but this is in lovely soft fresh plumage and has a beautiful grey head.

Rufous Throated Honeyeater chicks in the nest

Incredible nest of a Rufous Throated Honeyeater suspended at the end of a spindly branch.