| Birding
On My Own - Australia and New Zealand 2002 Emmalee Tarry |
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Kakadu National Park |
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Further down the road I spent three hours in the large bird blind at the Mamukala Wetlands one of the major tourist areas in Kakadu. The bird blind has benches and is shady and cool.
There were three winter plumaged Australian Pratincoles on the mud flat outside the blind. .I first saw this bird from the Yellow River Boat trip and my first take when seeing it on the edge of the billabong was that it looked like a small jaeger with long wings that project beyond the tail. Here I noticed that it tends to bob its head when standing.
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| This is the beautiful little Pied Heron feeding
outside the bird blind. This is the same little bird that hung out next to the
restaurant at Cooinda and was so fond of cold ham from the salad
bar Flying over the marsh I saw:Little Tern, Caspian Tern, Whiskered Tern. In the bushes next to the blind Rainbow Bee-eater, Broad-billed Flycatcher |
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You can see all the herons, ducks and waders here that you see on the boat trip. Here is the Rufous Night-Heron. Little, Intermediate, and Great Egret, Black-necked Stork, Pied Heron, Glossy Ibis, Pacific Black Duck, Rajah Shelduck, Masked Lapwing, Magpie Goose, Wandering Whistling-duck, Darter, Black-winged Stilt, Australian Grebe, |
Traveling isn't always easy especially with teenagers. I overhead this comment. "What I don't understand is why we drove in the car for hours and hours to get to this little bit of water that's full of birds." This young lady made her point as I heard her father losing his temper with her on the way out.
The next day I started out again for Darwin stopping again at the water hole, bird blind and at the Kakadu Lodge to walk to the billabong. This was a pleasant and birdy walk but I didn't see anything new. At the Alligator River picnic ground I had my first Pied-Imperial Pigeon.
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