Today was another fantastic day! Jim invited us to go out with him super early to look for Bourke's Parrots (Jim Oatley - Alice Springs Bird Tours - look him up!). So we met him at 5:30am and arrived at the site a bit after 6:00am. It was still pitch black outside, other than a slightly lighter shade of blue just starting to appear on the horizon. Bourke's Parrots tend to come into drink in the darkness just before sunrise and just after sunrise, so we were set up at a dam on the Santa Teresa Road out of Alice Springs, the road of yesterday's adventures. We waited for a while and could see tiny micro bats flitting around, and the beginnings of reds and oranges appearing in the sky. And then we heard them! Several pairs came in to drink - we didn't see all of them, just one pair really but could hear more. The ones we could make out were too far across the dam, and flew away far to quickly to even attempt a photo, but it was really too dark anyway. Our early start was rewarded by a beautiful sunrise.
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| Santa Teresa Road, NT |
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| Santa Teresa Road, NT |
Once the sun came up a bit, a few different birds came along. A pair of black-fronted dotterels were running around, budgies flew overheard but didn't land. black-faced woodswallows, and more. I saw my first Diamond Dove there, and saw a few more during the day. We left the damm, drove further along the road and saw a grey-headed honeyeater when we stopped to look for dusky grasswrens (no grasswrens, and not an excellent pic of the honeyeater!). At another little waterhole, we watched budgies, zebra finches, white-plumed honeyeaters and diamond doves come down to drink.
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| White-plumed Honeyeater, Santa Teresa Road, NT |
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| Diamond Dove, Santa Teresa Road, NT |
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| Budgerigars, Santa Teresa Road, NT |
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| Zebra Finch, Santa Teresa Road, NT |
We stopped at several other spots along the road - Jim knows all of the best spots, and which birds will be in each habitat type - and saw Hooded Robins and my first Western Gerygone. While we were searching for the Gerygone (we knew it was there as it has a very distinctive song that we could hear!), something larger zoomed past. I didn't pay much attention, but Jim said "oh! that was a Bourke's Parrot!", but we couldn't see where it went.
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| Hooded Robin, Santa Teresa Road, NT |
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| Western Gerygone, Santa Teresa Road, NT |
A little while later, as we were heading back along Santa Teresa Road, I was sitting in the passenger seat and spotted something in a tree near the road.... Bourke's Parrots! 3 of them! They allowed us enough time to pull over, jump out the car, and get a few photos, and then they were off. Needless to say, that alone would have made it a great day, but we were also lucky enough to see several other cool birds, plus Jim's company, made it an excellent day!
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| Bourke's Parrot, Santa Teresa Road, NT |
After our outing with Jim we went to the Alice Springs Desert Park. For some reason I had it in my mind that this was going to be something similar to the Port Augusta Arid Lands Botanic Gardens, but it's not! It's a wildlife park, but just for desert species. It has several aviaries where you can view birds through a window, and two other larger ones that you can walk into and be among the birds! I took the opportunity to practice my bird photography while they were all nice and close, and well as familiarising myself with some of the birds we haven't come across yet but are hoping to see in the wild on this trip! We even saw a Bourke's Parrot in one of the aviaries, which let us get a much better look than the wild ones earlier in the day. I didn't want to post any photos of the aviary birds here (maybe at a later date!), but this one was too cute to resist: black-faced woodswallows, huddling together to keep warm in the wind.
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| Black-faced Woodswallows, Alice Springs Desert Park (aviary birds), NT |
Of course there were plenty of wild birds in the park which I kept a list of and got some photos. We saw a solitary Grey-crowned Babbler (lifer!). According to Jim, one of these escaped from an aviary at the park a while back, and seems to have attracted a few friends that hang around the park. The bird I saw didn't have a leg tag so isn't likely the escapee (unless the tag fell off!). We also saw a Torresian Crow, plenty of white-plumed and spiny-cheeked honeyeaters, and some lovely Splendid Fairywrens, which are obviously used to people walking around, so let me get quite close.
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| Splendid Fairy-wren, Alice Springs Desert Park (wild bird), NT. |
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