#303 Australasian Bushlark at the Western Treatment Plant, Victoria, November 3

After getting a terrible back-lit photo of a bushlark at the start of the year which I promptly deleted, I was very glad to get this one to add to the year list. I call them a Horsfield's Bushlark, but I think they've been renamed to Australasian Bushlark...

#303 Australasian Bushlark

#302 Leaden Flyctahcer at Woodlands Historic Park, November 1

The first Tuesday in November is Melbourne Cup Day, a public holiday. I'm not at all a fan of horse racing, but I'm most certainly a fan of public holidays!!! Of course, being a teacher, any spare time at this time of the year is usually spent writing reports, which is what I planned to do today... after some recreation time, of course. I headed to Woodlands because it is close to home, not expecting to find much. But I was very pleased to find a female flycatcher, which in the field I thought was a Satin Flycatcher. I has since been identified as a Leaden Flycatcher by the good people at the bird ID Facebook page. Now, instead of writing reports, I'm writing this page. Oh, sweet procrastination...

#302 Leaden Flycatcher

#299 to #301 around Beindigo, Victoria, October 9

I DID IT!!! 300 SPECIES OF BIRDS PHOTOGRAPHED IN 2016!!!!

I go back to work tomorrow (Monday) for the madness of Term four of the school year (I'm a teacher). This means no spare time. Instead, I'll be writing reports. So I was hoping to reach my goal today... and I did! Yay!

I considered a range of locations for today, but ended up choosing Kamarooka in Bendigo because I felt I had a better chance of finding something new for the year there. But when I arrived, I found that most of the birds were hiding from the wind. I struggled to find anything until a family of Variegated Fairywren popped up and I snapped photo #299 for the year.

I pushed on towards the distillery dam where I always find a lot of birds. There were very few around today. Bugger. I moved on again to find the roads impassable in my little two-wheel-drive. Bugger. I moved back to the main road, and that's when I could hardly believe my eyes. A Square-tailed Kite was soaring right next to the car. I piled on the brakes and leapt out of the car. I fired off at least 100 photos before I realised that the settings were all wrong!!! I quickly adjusted, but the bird had moved too far away. Luckily a few adjustments to the photos on the computer recovered the photos somewhat. I was overjoyed to have this incredible species as #300 for the year, especially since seeing one and not being able to stop in time for a photo exactly a week ago when we were at Litchfiled National Park in the Northern Territory. Woo hoo!!!

I continued looking around Kamarooka wherever the roads weren't too bad, hoing to photograph a White-fronted or Purple-gaped Honeyeater, but couldn't find any. The wind was pretty ferocious and it was time to start going home.

While passing through Bendigo, I heard the familliar call of some Musk Lorikeet, a very common species that has eluded my camera all year long. I stopped, got a photo within 30 seconds, and then continued driving home. Species #301!

I might get a few more photos for the year, who knows, but I'll be taking it pretty easy from here. No more big drives until 2017 (unless something mega-rare turns up, of course).

#299 Variegated Fairywren

#300 Square-tailed Kite

#301 Musk Lorikeet

#298 Silvereye at The Jawbone, Williamstown, Victoria, October 6

Silvereye are extremely common, and I usually get a reasonable photo of one a few times each year. But this year I've struggled to get any sort of photo. Today I went to a place that I have seen Silvereye quite a few times and tried to track them down by call. I eventually found a small flock, and then began the difficult task of finding one that would come out into the open and stay still for more than a nanosecond. A few did and I ticked off species photograph #298 for 2016. I did feel a bit silly going somewhere and targeting such a common bird...! Two more photos to go...

#298 Silvereye

eBird checklist: http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist/S31912572

#297 Fairy Martin at the Western Treatment Plant, Victoria, October 5

I came back from Darwin falling just 4 species short of my 300 species goal for 2016. I decided to go and find some 'easy' local species that I had neglected to photograph so far. The weather was terrible, about 12 degrees and extremely overcast. I was hopeful of finding some Fairy Martin perched on the fences at the treatment plant like they usually are. There were none perched. All were in flight. So I attempted the only stupid and ridiculous thing that I could do - I tried to get in in-flight shot of a Fairy Martin in overcast low-light conditions. Out of about 300 photos taken I actually got a few that would be passable. Yay!

#297 Fairy Martin

eBird checklist: http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist/S31912540

#286 to #296 around Darwin, Northern Territory, October 3

We spent the morning of our last day in Darwin driving to a few birding locations. First of all, we had a look around the botanic gardens for the Rufous Owl, but once again could not find it. Then we went to East Point to have a look for waders. I absolutely love waders, and fortunately for me, there were quite a few at East Point. I managed to pick out some nice ones too!

#286 Terek Sandpiper

#287 Lesser Sand Plover

#288 Striated Heron

#289 Forest Kingfisher

#290 Northern Fantail

Then we went to the East Point Mangrove Boardwalk. There wasn’t a lot around, but I did get a good look at (and bad photos of) two Torresian Kingfisher.

#291 Torresian Kingfisher

 eBird checklist: http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist/S31863245  

We only had a short time at this location because I wanted to be at Buffalo Creek early enough to have a chance of finding a Chestnut Rail, which of course, I couldn’t find. But I gave it a good go. I also had great view of a Black Butcherbird, but getting a photo was extremely difficult!

#292 Black Butcherbird

eBird checklist: http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist/S31866220

I eventually gave up on the Chestnut Rail so that we could explore Lee Point (we were running out of time) where I got onto some very nice waders.

#293 Yellow Oriole

#294 Grey-tailed Tattler

#295 Grey Plover

#296 Greater Sand Plover

eBird checklist: http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist/S31866960

And that was the end of our Darwin holiday. We went back to the hotel to collect our luggage, ate some lunch, and headed to the airport to fly home to Melbourne. I saw 110 species including 41 lifers (42 including Red-collared Lorikeet that eBird considers a sub-species of Rainbow Lorikeet, 43 including Masked Lapwing that has been split from our southern version). That’s a lot in just 4 days!

#277 to #285 around Darwin and Litchfiled National Park, Northern Territory, October 2

For our third day in Darwin we had planned to hire a car and drive to Litchfiled National Park. Not a well known birding location, but an incredibly beautiful place to explore.

We couldn’t get the car until 8:00am, so that meant that I could finally explore the park opposite our hotel (where we had been upgraded the most amazing room thanks to my wife’s industry contacts). I knew that there was a Barking Owl roost about 100 metres from our hotel, so that’s where I headed. Along the way I found quite a lot to photograph as well! We found the Barking Owls quite easily, as they were making quite a bit of noise!

#277 Double-barred Finch

#278 Torresian Imperial-pigeon

#279 Little Friarbird

#280 Orange-footed Scrubfowl

#281 Bar-shouldered Dove

#282 Barking Owl

eBird checklist: http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist/S31842789

Then we picked up the car and headed to Litchfield. We had a wonderful day exploring the beauty of Litchfield, but as expected I didn’t find many birds. We did see quite a few raptors on the way and my wife was beginning to see the difference between the common Black and Whistling Kites, mostly due to the forked tail of the Black Kite. I mentioned that if we see anything with big, long wings and a square-shaped tail that we would need to pull over immediately. Then, on the way to Wangi Falls, we saw one. I started yelling, “Square-tailed Kite! Square-tailed Kite!” as the bird soared right next to the car. My wife was driving, and she stopped as soon as she could – there was a car right behind us, and there was nowhere to safely pull over. We found a spot a few hundred metres up to the road to do a U-turn, and went back for a look, but could not find it again. It was equally thrilled to see such a wonderful species and disappointed that I could not get a photo.

At Wangi Falls I found more birds than the rest of the park. I was hoping for a Black-tailed Treecreeper, but none were seen or heard. Then we headed back to Darwin, and somewhere along the way I saw a Dollarbird perched on the power lines, so we pulled over and got a photo!

#283 Great Bowerbird

#284 Red-tailed Black-cockatoo

#285 Dollarbird

 eBird checklist: http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist/S31849251