Spotting Spotted Ducks makes for happy year's end

Great year of birding for me in Town Common ended with five mornings of getting to know rare visitors originally from Papua New Guinea, three Spotted Whistling Ducks. Members of the species have been gradually heading heading south for some years. Birds have in past three years been seen in Townsville at the Palmetum lagoon near the Ross River,  and at the Bohle Wetlands revegetation site.

Happily for me, the trio at the new borrow pits in the Common are much less flighty than a pair of Pacific Black Ducks sometimes associating with them.

And they seem mostly to get along together. Every now and again there'll be a minor flurry of touchiness. But as yet I've been too slow to catch the action till peace almost resumes, as above, today.

Did get lucky with other action in the same pool at the borrow pits this week. Australian Gill-billed Terns believe in high-speed drinking. Hundreds on images were binned before one passable picture emerged.

Similar story with the scores of Carpenter Bees visiting blue water lilies. Happy with the shot, specially given the Tamron 150-600mm lens is workaday gear without pretence to macro credentials. But it is much easier to manage than massive Canon 600mm when clambering through 3-metre bulrush and across stretches of thick oozy mud and deep-broken pig-churned ground.

Hopeful and happy 2020 to all.