THOMPSON'S & PARHAM : PART II

Well...after begging for some time away from Daddy-duties I was given the Sunday morning off to go and (with fingers crossed...) photograph the Black Falcon I had seen late last week and to take advantage of the clear sunny morning for a few Elegant Parrot shots. No luck on the Black Falcon front sadly, loads of rabbits running to and fro as well as Australasian Pipit's too..but no luck with the Falcon. So, onward I travelled to catch the morning high-tide at Thompson's to redeem my past efforts shooting Pac. Golden Plover in rather miserable lighting. Expectations were high, as the morning looked fantastic, clear skies and a very slight breeze promised good conditions for digiscoping.

I pulled in to the southern side of Thompson's Beach just after 8am (technically an hour before high tide...) and was very peeved to see that the water was about 800m offshore with nothing but exposed weed between me and the birds. I could see a few small flocks (100 or so) waders flying and diving just out to sea but at such a distance the scope was useless. Nothing for it but to walk out and get some brine in the boots!

I decided to do the walk-out on the Northern end of the beach where the track/public access ends, just about 200m from the end of the track there is a nice little inlet where I thought I'd station  myself once the tide was on it's way in. Again, to my dismay (another more colourful description perhaps more fitting???) I had to abandon that plan because a family with small kids were playing Beach Cricket on the opposite side of the bank and making a god-awful racket. Good on you Mum and Dad for getting the kids out of the house bright and early on a Sunday morn' but why go to such a tranquil spot, with so few visitors and pollute it with your disgusting cheering? Yes, I am a curmudgeonly git.

Time to put 'Plan 2' into effect; walk out to where the birds were and take some photos and a list of species present. But after trudging out there in the sticky mud that these northern shores are famous for, I was feeling a little low....not to mention that the only birds out on the water's edge were chooks....alas, I decided to hone the digiscoping skills by playing around photographing the birds that were nearby. During this time the wind began to whip up and made things a bit uncomfortable, not to mention the fact that by 9:45 the water had still not come any closer to shore - very odd! The light had also gone from gorgeous to god-awful within an hour and now things were a little too bright....there's no pleasing some people, eh?

So, plan 2 shot to ribbons and Thompson's abandoned in favour of the northern side of Parham. This side of this little town is great, nice stands of remnant coastal heath and samphire flats and also great to see such large blocks of it preserved on people's own private land too! Good on you Parhamites! I still can't get over seeing old stands of Callitris so close to the sea, it makes me wonder what places like Semaphore, Grange, Brighton and Glenelg would have looked like before the settlement of white folks. Anyway, enough...I was on a mission (again!) to find and photograph Elegant Parrots after getting washed out last week and like clockwork, these beaut little birds popped up in the samphire between the northern-most road (beyond the FREE camping ground - yes, FREE, in these crazy modern times!!!) but they were playing games with me, I swear

 "Let's pop up just long enough to see the dumpy man fuddle with his camera and scope and as he focuses it, BANG!  - let's scram!"

This happened over and over again, but what views I had in between! Such a sweet little bird, their little yellow/lime bellies were luminous in the sun light. A pity one of the only decent shots I managed didn't do them justice....hmmmmm, feeling a 'thread' running through my blog entries here. Despite it all I was chuffed to get great views of the birds over such an extended period and to see a little gang of White-browed Babblers close to the camping area scooting about and making a lot of noise. The other good news is that the Blue Bonnet's are also hanging around, but closer to the north-eastern side of town, by the houses on this boundary.

Fin!

Wati Tjulpu