Trevor's Birding

A special call in the night

1 Comment »8th June, 2014; Category: Garden birds, Nocturnal birds, Owls Frogmouths and Nightjars

Southern Boobook owl

A few night ago we were suddenly aware of the familiar call of a Southern Boobook owl quite close to our house. I only took a few moments to locate it in the large tree next to our clothes line. I didn’t bother getting out the camera to get some photos because the last time I saw one in our garden I got the photo shown above. It is quite possibly the same bird.

It has been some time since we heard a Boobook in our garden; usually we have the television going at night and that tends to drown out the night sounds. On this occasion we had both been working on cleaning out the office, so the television was off. Perhaps we should do that more often!

Much to our delight we heard it calling again the following night. It would be lovely to be able to call it a resident bird present nearly every night, instead of just an occasional visitor every few years. It is quite welcome to move in and can have all the mice it can catch while it stays.

Further reading:

World record set by birder

2 Comments »3rd June, 2014; Category: Birders, Birds in the News

I regard myself as a devoted and keen birder. I am not a twitcher – I usually can’t be bothered going to see a rare bird even if it occurred a few kilometres away from home. I am not a fanatic – I do have other interests (too many in fact). I do not go racing all over the countryside in order to see birds.

But I am a lister of birds seen. I keep day lists, month lists, year lists and a life list. None of them are very big because I do not regard birding some kind of competition or race to see the most species. I do keep all of my sightings on a database stretching back as far as 1977. I guess that is bordering on fanaticism.

I do admire birders who dedicate a whole year to seeing as many species as possible. Even more, I envy birders who have had the opportunity to travel to almost every country of the world in order to make a life list of thousands of species. Their single mindedness to the task is admirable, and I hope that they have fun doing it.

Until a few days ago I had not heard of world record holder for having seen the most bird species on a global scale. I had read about a previous record holder Phoebe Snetsinger, but the name of Tom Gullick was a new one to me. At age 81, this dedicated Englishman is the first person to have seen over 9000 different bird species in a lifetime. You can read about him here.

With a world wide life list hovering around just over 400 species, I have a long way to go to catch up. I haven’t even seen half of Australia’s bird species yet. [Sigh]

Photographic study of pelicans

No Comments »2nd June, 2014; Category: Pelicans, Photos, Waterbirds

Australian Pelican, Narrung, South Australia

One of the advantages of travelling on the River Murray by boat is that occasionally the birds allow the viewers to approach quite close.

The photos of Australian Pelicans shown on today’s post were taken a few months ago at Narrung near the ferry crossing. This crossing is part of the River Murray system linking Lakes Alexandrina and Albert, not all that far from the mouth of the Murray.

Many of my photos – like those shown here today – are now available from my product store TrevorsPhotos including T shirts, caps, mugs, cards and many more items.

Australian Pelican, Narrung, South Australia

I can’t swim that fast

No Comments »1st June, 2014; Category: Bird Behaviour, Darters and Cormorants, Waterbirds

Little Black Cormorant, Narrung, South Australia

I took this photo at the very end of our boat trip earlier this year. We had travelled across Lake Alexandrina, along the River Murray past Goolwa to the Murray Mouth and through the Coorong.

As we approached the boat ramp next to the Narrung ferry (SE of Adelaide) this lone Little Black Cormorant was waiting for my camera while deciding whether he needed to fly away from our boat, or not. Looking at the mess on the signs, it is obvious that this is a common resting spot for many birds.

Look at all those pelicans

No Comments »31st May, 2014; Category: Pelicans, Waterbirds

Australian Pelicans

A few weeks ago I wrote about a trip I went on via boat through the Coorong south of Adelaide in South Australia. The Coorong is a natural lakes system near the mouth of the River Murray and is acknowledged as one of the major bird habitats in the world.

Just after leaving the river mouth our boat passed the sand bar shown in the photo above. I won’t even attempt to estimate how many Australian Pelicans were sitting there. All I can say is: there must a few fish in the lakes and river system, and this was just one of many large gatherings of this species we saw on the day.

Coorong National Park, South Australia