I only update the gallery photos occasionally. Sorry about that, too busy. See my Sri Lanka gallery though and also the latest additions to my UK and Denmark galleries.
May 2020
23 May
Ross and I did the Ash Island survey, on a cold and very windy morning. We didn't find a lot of birds, and no migratory shorebirds. However, we had 24 Black-fronted Dotterels and 35 Red-capped Plovers on Fish Fry Flats, and also saw Chestnut Teal and Brown Quail with young, several Black Swans on nests, a Gull-billed Tern and five species of raptor. So, not a bad morning!
21 May (an update)
I have finally finished the Broughton Island Silvereyes paper and also drafted a paper about the Rufous Scrub-bird study. The daily Penta Puzzles continue to go out (but, I have announced that they will finish on 30 May). I've processed two more notebooks of old records (getting them into Birdata) and am mid-way through the S's in my editing of bird photos.
18 May
I decided to do an outing even though I'm not sure what we're allowed to do or not do. Anyhow, I went to Blacksmiths Nature Reserve for a while in the afternoon, between the showers. There had been reports of Red-whiskered Bulbuls but I wasn't able to track any of them down. Highlights included a New Holland Honeyeater amongst all the White-cheeked Honeyeaters, and a Spangled Drongo.
13 May
We held the HBOC meeting using Zoom - I had been an advocate for this and so I was quite delighted as to how well it went. The two talks were high quality, which helped.
6 May
Some excitement today - a parcel arrived, bearing two framed certificates (one for Margaret, one for me) and a cheque. This was all for the prize we won for best paper in the journal Corella for 2019. In the evening there was an HBOC management committee meeting, which was done using Zoom. It was great to see some familiar faces for the first time in 6-7 weeks.
5 May
Today I was in another all-day Zoom workshop, this time to develop a Site Action Plan for shorebirds in the Manning estuary. There were fewer participants than for the two preceding workshops but we still had 20 or so people and once again I was quite pleased with the way the day went.
3 May (an update)
I'm still housebound wrt birdwatching, because of the Covid-19 lockdown. I'm continuing to process old photos (although I've lost a lot of enthusiasm for that task!) and I'm also still sending out a daily crossword plus back-entering old records into Birdata. I've also had a couple of Whistler manuscripts to work on (as an editor of the journal). Time passes.