Wednesday, March 28
6:30 am Ballina, NSW, Australia
18 C forecast high 25 C with some showers
7:30 am Musing
I am beginning to slow down and adjust to simply enjoying the moment. Driving is now pretty well under control. The windshield wipers no longer go on when I try to signal, and the traffic flow is straight-forward. I still have to pay close attention in parking lots where I occasionally enter a route on the wrong side of the road.
We are getting the hang of shopping for only a very few items at a time as our fridge is very small.
The Queensland election was a bit of a surprise to almost everyone, not for the final result, but for the scale of the switch. Reminiscent of when we turfed out the PCs in Canada 20 years ago. Electronic elections are becoming problematic as hackers as well as poorly designed software are beginning to raise questions about the validity of the results. The NDP leadership contest in Canada is a case in point.
I am surprised at how little reading I am doing at the moment. At least part of the explanation may be due to the change in body rhythms but I feel that I need a good non-fiction book, or web-site.
11:50 am Birding
We drove over to Lake Chickiba this morning and followed that with a stop at Flat Rock. The surprise here was to see a Royal Spoonbill among the Australian White Ibises. A further surprise was when I digitally zoomed in on a group of 4 birds on the far shore which we assumed were White Ibises and discovered they were Royal Spoonbills. We also saw a male Pacific Golden Plover in breeding plumage. It is going to take some serious work looking at the photos to identify some of the other waders.
While at Flat Rock a "real" birdwatcher arrived with spotting scope. She was counting the number of Common Terns and Crested Terns. We chatted for a few minutes and she told us that the terns we had identified as Arctic Terns were actually Common Terns. They do look very similar, but she said that Arctic Terns were fairly rare in this area. I will make the necessary changes to my database. She also suggested we try going to Weldrum Park in Ballina.
In the late afternoon we tried Weldrum Park but were disappointed to see almost no birds. We will try this again tomorrow morning.
Here is a list of the birds we saw today.
- Australian White Ibis
- Royal Spoonbill (new for 2012)
- Great Egret
- White-faced Heron
- Little Egret (new for 2012)
- Pacific Golden Plover
- Curlew Sandpiper (new for 2012)
- Sharp-tailed Sandpiper (new for 2012)
- Bar-tailed Godwit
- Common Sandpiper (LIFER)
- Grey-tailed Tattler (new for 2012)
- Willy Wagtail
- Common Tern
- Crested Pigeon
- Corella
Royal Spoonbill
Sharp-tailed Sandpiper
Bar-tailed Godwit
Curlew Sandpiper
Grey-tailed Tattler
Grey-tailed Tattler with Pacific Golden Plovers
The Common Sandpiper was our third Australian Lifer for this trip, and our 199th different Australian species.
12:30 PM Life
We arrived at Lennox Head to have a coffee with a real estate agent that we first met about 10 years ago. This was a lovely chat as we brought each other up with what we had been doing.