218) A Three Desert Tour

OK - I was close. This is desert birding.....

Not a trip to be taken lightly (yes, people do die out there), Dirk has been carefully planning our trip to explore the central (Tirari, Strzelecki and Simpson) desert region of Australia for during late winter/early spring to make sure we arrived well before the heat.  We wanted to avoid the potential of experiencing last summer's temperatures, when the Bureau of Meteorology added new colours to their maps to represent the record-breaking temperatures in this region (max 50.7 C = 123 F; increasing average).

So here's a map of our route through South Australia, beginning and ending in Adelaide.  Overall, we drove 4200 km (damn big place)!  Most of the roads are dirt, ranging from wide and well-maintained major thoroughfares to bone-shaking corrugated tracks to sand dunes. Except for the most southern region, everything north of the Flinders Range was quite dry.  So we planned for artesian bores (drilled to support the old cattle routes that stretched through the region), lakes and areas that had been flooded in the massive rains in 2009-2011 when water flowed across Queensland down to fill Lake Eyre. We missed that rare event, but hoped to track some of the birds which followed those massive water events.

Our first stop (after a massive grocery purchase) was Mt Remarkable National Park, south of the Flinders Range. The trail along Mambray Creek was delightful!  Clear, cool, water was sparkling down the creek in the morning light, the lively birds were darting amidst the Red River Gums set against a verdant green understory, and we were happy to be out and about exploring in a new and exciting place. Right out of the campground we spotted Adelaide Rosellas - a local variant of the Crimson Rosellas common up 'north' (in our area).

















Things were gloriously green and the 'roos were out in force, with the little joeys experiencing the salad days of springtime.

 Nancy was thrilled to find a family of one of her favourites - White-browed Babblers yakking away as they moved through the landscape, looking for bugs to eat and for new sticks for their communal nests.












The rosellas were nesting too, and the glorious old Red River Gums with their fantastical shapes harboured many safe hollows for lots of birds to tuck their nurseries safely inside.

Grey Fantails zipped about, finding plenty of bugs to snap out of the air and fill their hungry bellies.

217) Escaping the Reality Occuring Across the World

Regent Bowerbird

A one-in-500-year flood in Colorado and we're in (for now) sunny Australia...  As the streets across the Front Range became rivers, the rains in Eldorado continued to fall, our Eldo neighbors were evacuated, our friend's houses were flooded and lost, and our Eldo house poised itself to leap into the rising river, we felt the need to get away from the constant stream of distressing news about which we could do absolutely nothing to help. So we drove up to the rainforest. The Regent Bower Birds are back for the summer and swoop in a flash of yellow quite suddenly out of the mists. 

 A female Regent dispassionately checks out the gene pool....


















The mists thickened so a tree with 5 glowing birds really stood out. Here is one who was kind  enough not to show me his back!

 One of the longtime Satin bowerbird bowers still being refined by its architect, a twitterpated male with refined taste in stick placement.

We heard that our Eldo house wisely decided not to get swept away with any of its occupants, (although a big chunk of the yard and our new tree decided to head downstream) so some of our household decided on a nap in the sunshine.

Thanks to Helen for keeping it all together, to Kai and Dave for sending photos, to Quinn for clearing the deck and dealing with power and water in the basement, to whoever it was in years gone by that had the presence of mind to build the retaining wall that saved our house, to Brad for building a 500-year flood-proof deck, and to anyone else who has kindly lent a hand.