A short birding visit to Narrandera

Morning tea in Narrandera

December 2008 Holiday in New South Wales Trip report #4

On our way to Sydney for Christmas we stopped  briefly in the Riverina town of Narrandera, New South Wales. We filled up with fuel and then found a nice park in which to relax for half an hour while we had a cuppa and morning tea.

I didn’t record many birds in this park despite the good conditions, though there were a few people around at the time. One pleasing sighting was a good view of a male Mistletoebird in  a tree nearby. Of course my camera was still in the car! The photo below was taken several years ago at home in Murray Bridge.

Mistletoebird

Next to where we were having our cuppa was a beautiful oval. What drew our attention to the oval were the large sprinklers pumping out huge volumes of water on to the oval in the middle of the day. Narrandera is on the banks of the Murrumbidgee River, one of the tributaries of our Murray River. Water that should be flowing down the river system is being wasted in this flagrant way, with no thought to residents of South Australia who haven’t been able to use sprinklers for a long time, and whose ovals are mostly dry grass in the main. I find this offensive, immoral and downright selfish.

Narrandera, New South Wales