Purple-crowned Fairy-wren, Crimson Finch, Rainbow Bee-eater and an Australian Bustard

After seeing the Purple-crowned Fairy-wren on the weekend, I decided to stop in on my drive home to see if they were still there, and to try to take better photos. Fortunately for me, they were still there, and even though the adults kept to the pandanas, the young ones eventually came out into the open. The photos are below:

I also wanted to see if I could find some more Crimson Finches. Again, the younger ones were much happier to be in the open (I think the adult finches and fairy-wrens were having the afternoon off and were having cups of tea in the pandanas together!)

A bird I had beard but not seen on my previous visit to the Camfield River was the Rainbow Bee-eater, and this time a few of them sat on exposed branches as they normally do, displaying their beautiful range of colours in the afternoon sun:

The above photos were taken at Camfield River on the Buntine Highway on Camfield Station. Other birds there included flycatchers, doves, honeyeaters of various types and surprisingly, bats. They were very noisy down along the river in the pandanas, and at first I thought I had heard a new species, but then quickly realised the noise was coming from the bats. Just after dusk on the same day, I watched an amazing migration of bats from the spring areas to their night feeding grounds, the numbers were well above a thousand, possibly up to 2-3 thousand.

Even though I have seen a number of Australian Bustards, or Bush Turkeys as they are also know, I don't think any have been so close or so non-threatened by the presence of the car as this one:

From the car to the bird would have been 4-5 metres to start with, it then wandered around near the car for about a minute and then leisurely crossed the road behind the car. The locals love hunting these birds for food so maybe it knew the camera wasn't going to hurt much. Lucky for me.

Happy Birding!

(to see more photos of any of the birds in this post, click on the links below)

Purple-crowned Fairy-wren

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:

Happy Birding!