Woe is me, I am bereft. Spotted Whistling Ducks have left.

Woe is me. I am bereft. My Spotted Whistling Ducks have left.

Five there were just yesterday. All upped sticks and gone away.

Thirtynine days and 40 nights. End so close to Biblical flights.

Sought solace in poetry on ducks. None to be had. It all sucks!

                                                                   The end

Fruitful days amid juicy mangos tempered by tragedy

It's a fruitful life, this birding caper. With lovely, big, juicy mangos (my preferred spelling) thrown in. Among Cape Pallarenda Conservation Park's plantings are several big old mango trees, and one smaller one offering much tastier fruit. Fight off the green ants and start licking your lips. Want some? Too bad. All gone. Conservation volunteers deserve a wee perk now and then for their efforts. So, of course, do birders. And Brush-turkeys.

Fruitful, too, some sightings. My three Spotted Whistling Ducks now into third week at the borrow pits in Town Common Cons. Pk, Townsville. Twice lately they've come feeding close, slurping across the surface of the water lily leaves with rapidly vibrating bills. Now and then one will dive from view to feed off the lily stems. It seem possible they may stay until the Wet arrives. No sign of that yet.

Elsewhere in the Common, two Barking Owls had their peaceful, hidden day roosting shattered by three enraged Great Bowerbirds. But the relentless barrage of bird abuse, including mimicked Whistling Kite fury, didn't move the owls. Owls moved to more open possie overnight and put up with my intrusion as stolidly as they'd outlasted verbals the day before.

And, finally, how guilty a pleasure it can feel, that so much natural wonder is mine at a time so much natural disaster is befalling Australia, the people, property, wildlife and bush. What to say? Life goes on . . . From the ashes . . . Count our blessings . . .  For now, I'm lost for words.

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.