This weekend has been an amazing experience. After work on Friday I headed out of Lajamanu and up the Buntine Highway towards the Victoria Highway. My aim was to be at the Victoria River Roadhouse early in the morning as I had read that Purple-crowned Fairy-wrens could be there near the main bridge in the first few hours of the morning. The late afternoon drive and night drive were something else but that will be in a later blog post.
I did manage to be at the right place at the right time and despite looking, dipped on the fairy-wrens. I decided by mid-morning that I may as well move on, but then went down the boat-launch "river access" road, and had only walked 30 metres from the car when I could hear a twittering, like a fairy-wren, but unlike the normal ones I have heard. I was a bit excited and within seconds there were two fairy-wrens that had fluttered across the road, into the sun, perched momentarily on a branch of the lower spear grass, then were gone. I hadn't touched the camera but had seen the definitive black mask around the eye and a dull purple on the top of the head.
I decided to continue on, still photographless of the fairy-wren. I had originally decided to return the following morning, but as things went I continued on back towards Lajamanu and didn't return.
After a long weekend of bird-watching, I decided to stop for the last time at Camfield Major, a river crossing just beyond Camfield Station on the Buntine Highway between Top Springs and Kalkarindji. For a moment I thought I'd heard that same twittering I had at Victoria River Roadhouse, but it couldn't be. They were further north than here. And then it happened. From beneath a large stand of riverside grass, a fairy-wren sprung out and hopped up the bank in my general direction. The following are just some of the photos I took:
I did manage to be at the right place at the right time and despite looking, dipped on the fairy-wrens. I decided by mid-morning that I may as well move on, but then went down the boat-launch "river access" road, and had only walked 30 metres from the car when I could hear a twittering, like a fairy-wren, but unlike the normal ones I have heard. I was a bit excited and within seconds there were two fairy-wrens that had fluttered across the road, into the sun, perched momentarily on a branch of the lower spear grass, then were gone. I hadn't touched the camera but had seen the definitive black mask around the eye and a dull purple on the top of the head.
I decided to continue on, still photographless of the fairy-wren. I had originally decided to return the following morning, but as things went I continued on back towards Lajamanu and didn't return.
After a long weekend of bird-watching, I decided to stop for the last time at Camfield Major, a river crossing just beyond Camfield Station on the Buntine Highway between Top Springs and Kalkarindji. For a moment I thought I'd heard that same twittering I had at Victoria River Roadhouse, but it couldn't be. They were further north than here. And then it happened. From beneath a large stand of riverside grass, a fairy-wren sprung out and hopped up the bank in my general direction. The following are just some of the photos I took:
Happy Birding!
No comments:
Post a Comment