Mornington and surrounding area

Well here's a sight you don't see every day at Slapton Ley, in South Devon !! A Fresh water croc lurking just under the surface of the creek! Although they generally wont go for umans, when the water is low its not unknown for freshies to have a go if they cannot get out of the way fast enough !!

Now this was taken at Windjana Gorge, which is pre empting some of these photos !


Some views out over the bush from the foot hills around Windjana Gorge with Baobs scattered thoroughout.

This is Kopak tree which has several properties. The leaves can be eaten and high in vitamin C and the roost of young trees roasted and eaten or pounded to make a medicine for sores. The trees loose thier levaes just before flowering so the hillside is covered by yellow flowers making a beautiful site.

A spider on the rocks but no idea what type!

A female Leaden flycatcher, identifiable from Broad billed flycatcher mainly by the narrow bill.

A bad photo of a Sandstone thrush shrike which was difficult to photograph as it stayed in deepish cover and kept moving !

White bellied cuckoo shrike relatively common around the gorge.

An unexpected find but apparently quite common, Archer fish !!!! i always want to see one and there they were swimming around ! Didn't see any archery but noce to see none the less.

Back to Kopak, and the seed pods which where apparently sown into life savers in World War I

Some fantastic Baob trees are in the Kimberly region

The Devonian Limestone reef of Windjana

The Kimberly Rose, not really a rose but bright red

Australian bustards are fairly common up in the NW region especially where the savanna has been managed appropriately by fire.

Inside the gorge the water flows quietly and provides good habitat for Little pied cormorant and Azure kingfisher......too quick for me to photograph !

A bit of a surprise was the Black fruit bats roosting in the river side trees making a bit of noise scrapping and scratching and fighting !

Another Australian bustard...they are everywhere !

A close up of the rose of the Kimberly

more savahnna views again from the foot hills of the King Leopold range which we had to travel over to reach Mornington Station, owned by the Australian Wildlife Conservancy.

This croc must have been in a fight as the front end of its upper jaw has been ripped off....wonder how big the croc it was fighting was??!!

In a cave in the gorge we came across some bats hanging in the crack of the roof space.

Also cave dwelling dragonflies, not sure if they are there all the time or whether they were just seeking out shade from the sun.

Whilst exploring the cave system we spooked a couple of juvenile Boobook owls.

Another freshie in the gorge river

A nice adult Boobook owl seen on the main trail entrance through the gorge.

A hillside of Kopak and termite hills

Now this fella with the crazy hair do is a Spinifex pigeon ! so photogenic i have hundreds of them ! Very common at Mornington but also seen from the road through the King Leopold ranges

In Annie's gorge the North Fantail is common and poses quite well...better that the Purple crowned fairy wrens that i didn't photograph !

White browed robin is another specialist of the area found in the riparian habiat that follows the creeks.

yes, more Spinifex pigeons !

Sir Johns gorge, where the government wanted to dam up but due to environmental pressure groups the plans didn't go ahead.

Lakes tour Aug 09

Brown Falcon -pale phase

Swamp harrier and a blur of a Glossy ibis

Lake Eda view

Australian white pelican circling over the lakes

Brolga at Lake Campion

Striated pardalote

Long toed stint

Beaches at One Tree

The beach at One Tree near Crab Creek

We managed a small catch of Eastern curlew and Australian pied oystercatcher last weekend. Small but valuable as we don't normally catch that many so worthwhile to get more bands on curlew for distribution/movements and on oyks for Clare and her project following breeding birds about the place.

The curlew proved extremely difficult to age in the field due to the fact that so few have been caught in the past. Thay also seemed to be doing some strange moults. Some at 5 to the 10 and others at 1:1, 2:1, 4:1, O:4, V:3, possibly arrested and started agin??. We took photos of all wings and flags and recorded moults so hopefully Clive Minton and Chris Hassell can sort them out soon.









A few nice shots of Red necked avocet that have taken up residency in the bay with the Black winged stilts.

Well here we have a great piece of Austtalian planning in process. A new waste water treatment plant is going being built. Where ?? right in the middle of the bush! yes thats right in the bush so what are we going to gdo about it?? bring in a bull dozer and just trash the lot ! No wait we are going to leave the trees we find, but they will probably have to come down later to fit in with the plans.

To be fair, the site will be old style open ponds with large areas of grassland over which the dirty water will trickle to loose nutrients before it eventually soaks away into to the soil. So quite good for birds that don't like the bush!!! The grass is going to be some forgeign South African grass which will be taken as a silage ccrop so that it will never flower and set seed.......yeah right ! They also have no requirement to mitigate for the loss of habitats and don't have to do any preparation works like reptile removal, a planners dream it would seem !

Here we have the site being cleared with no pre-work having taken place, but its OK because the site has been over grazed and is poor quality. So what are you going to do to improve whats left...nothing...what are you going to do to improve the environemnt?? nothing will you allow public access to this lovely new freshwater environment you are creating....no. I am not impressed with the Australian way at all !!!

Changing teh subject totally, here are some dinosaur foot prints a three toed Cassowary type bird. You need to use your imagination a bit with the photos but they are there honest !!!

Another day in paradise !!!

Well this morning saw us go up to cuckoo corner along the Malurus trail to do a bit of ringing. We hadn't been there before but as there are quite a few flowering trees up there we thought it would be worth a go. It was very quiet to start with but soon livened up at about 9 am.

We were treated to a superb pair of Red backed fairy wren, the male in stuning breeding plumage whilst the female was in dull brown....so much so we didn't even take a photo !




Singing honeyeaters although common around the obs are not caught often so it was nice to net a few to get to grips with the condition of the plumage and ageing this species



Again, whilst relativley common, we have yet to ring many Rufous whistler, but today saw us catch pair so we could compare the plumage wear and difference in greater covert colour to attempt to age them.