Today was a fantastic day of birding! We were lucky enough to have the opportunity to go out with Jim Oatley, the fantastic photographer behind the popular Facebook page "Budgies and Bush Birds", and founder of Alice Springs Bird Tours. Jim really knows his stuff - the best spots to look, and can identify species from a long distance by their behaviour and calls. We spent about five hours stopping at various spots along the Santa Teresa Road, a birding hotspot well-known among Alice Springs birders. I recorded 30 species (I believe Jim saw a few more than I didn't list as I missed them, or didn't get a good look), including 6 lifers! Chiming Wedgebill, Banded Whiteface, Crested Bellbird, Red-backed Kingfisher, Rufous-crowned Emu-wren, and Black Honeyeater. The wedgebills and emu-wrens made us work hard to find them! The wedgebills taunted us for a while with their distinctive calls before allowing us a glimpse, and to find the emu-wrens we had to walk among prickly spinifex grass for quite a while, and we had nearly given up as it seemed a bit windy for these tiny birds to be out. Also saw plenty of budgies and zebra finches, a pair of mulga parrots, some more crimson chats, white-winged fairy-wrens, a yellow-rumped thornbill, a female red-capped robin, and a horsfield's bronze-cuckoo.
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| Mulga Parrot, Santa Teresa Road, NT. |
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| Chiming Wedgebill, Santa Teresa Road, NT. |
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| Crested Bellbird, Santa Teresa Road, NT. |
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| Horsfield's Bronze-cuckoo and Red-capped Robin (f), Santa Teresa Road, NT. |
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| White-winged Fairy-wren, Santa Teresa Road, NT. |
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| Zebra Finches, Santa Teresa Road, NT. |
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| Red-backed Kingfisher, Santa Teresa Road, NT. |
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| Rufous-crowned Emu-wren, Santa Teresa Road, NT. |
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| Rufous-crowned Emu-wren, Santa Teresa Road, NT. |
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| Black Honeyeater, Santa Teresa Road, NT. |
On the way back we saw a bearded dragon sunning itself on the road. We pulled over to take photos, but when I tried to shoo it off the road to prevent it from being run over by another car, it didn't want to move! First I tried trying to shoo it by moving my hands near it, then I tapped it's tail and back legs and it still didn't budge. I touched it's middle and it reared up a bit but didn't run off, and settled down again. In the end I had to pick it up and carry it off! I was a bit reluctant to pick it up incase it was one of those lizards that bites your finger with a vice-like grip and won't let go, but this one didn't even try. Once I put it down at the edge of the road it ran away.
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| Bearded Dragon, Santa Teresa Road, NT. |
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