Merry Xmas and Happy New Year from some Townsville Common friends

Crimson Finch, Golden-headed Cisticola, Dollarbird, Red-tailed Black Cockatoo, Black Swan, Pelican and Royal Spoonbill, Red-backed Fairy-wren, and one of two unexplained recent arrivals.

Rare beauty drops in: rarity drops out

Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) dropped in to grace main Tyto lagoon yesterday, first such visit since 2009. Gone today.

Not so with White-browed Crake (Amaurornis cinerea), though many more active yesterday – including some little black chicks – than today.

Amid such clear beauty two mystery birds - one terrible image above. Sheeny navy blue and brown coloration. Strongly marked but strangely different in each of the briefly glimpsed birds. Stare at image. Penny drops: subadult male Eastern Koel (Eudynamys scolopaceus). Swan proves only rare beauty of the day.

Click pix to enlarge 

Brolga catches my eye and dragonfly

Took subsidised health trip 110km south yesterday to Townsville to have orthopaedics consultant tell me I have one of the best bum knees he's seen. Just keep riding the bicycle for hours of daily birding and buy glucosamine, if the mood takes. Pre-dawn start before the good news bought five hours in the Town Common, a birders' magnet. Highlight photographically was a Brolga (Grus rubicunda) snapping up unidentifiable dragonfly.

Regulars to the Common - which is undergoing extensive planned understorey burning - are currently listing more than 60 species, so I ended well down with just 52 birds for the morning - most of them too distant or high for the camera. The above Black Swans (Cygnus atratus) became the only other shot worth processing.

Two wildlife encounters yielding no usable pictures were a close-up two-step with a particularly stroppy little Red-bellied Black Snake and a Brown Goshawk smashing at speed into a thorny thicket in a vain effort to nail a Bar-shouldered Dove. The snake eventually dived down a hole. The goshawk shook itself free of the thorns and sped off through the trees.