Well if nothing else, the ground is getting a fair old drenching. Keeping your Downwardly Mobile scribe inside too.
But the wet weather has certainly played its magic across the Crake and Rail communities.
We have been over the past few weeks monitoring a pair of Willie Wagtails that have set up a nest in a tree in the foyer area of a local Uni gym.
Sunday morning on the way home, we picked up a sandwich and some coffee and headed for said gym carpark. The weather was overcast, but not threatening, so we were going to use one of the picnic tables on the gym lawn for lunch.
Normally, I’d stop, EE would walk across the lawn and I’d park IamGrey and head back. But the lawn was little minature lakes, so it seemed best to stop at the ‘drier’ carpark.
Oh, she said, look a Coot has it two little young ones out in the grass. And sure enough, and who dear reader would argue with that observation. Click, click, click from that side of the vehicle.
I looked out and saw, just in front of the bonnet, another Coot, and thought, Oh, its a bit seperate from the family, until it cocked its head, and lo, it was a Buff-banded Rail.
Now its nigh on impossible to get a photographer to change from photographing one subject to taking interest in something more interesting. And with fear that I’d frighten the Rail, I backed the car ever slowly about 10m. Then, of course EE spied it and the door of the IamGrey slowly began to open. My camera was securely in the back, so I slipped along the edge to retrieve it, knowing full well that the bird will have taken the hint and fled.
But this one was a calm as they come. Sunday morning at the gym, no other people around, it felt pretty comfortable.
It foraged quite near us, then scampered back into the reeds, to emege again down near the table where we’d adjourned to have lunch and contemplate our fortunate state at seeing it so well.
It strolled about the path, then into the grass and about 10 minutes later slipped away, to come out again and let us ‘creep’ quietly up on it. Cool as.
In the end, time ran out, but the Rail was still going.
Was hoping to post these on Flickr, but for some reason, my Flickr account has been hijacked to another user id. So all I get to see is their pictures and contacts. So until I feel comfortable with Flickr again, most of the next couple of weeks shall be here on the blog. Hopefully won’t bore you with too many stories and same pics. Couple of interesting developments in the field at present.
I’ve had several email me and say that the Flickr photos are getting up, but I can’t see or comment on any at all. They tell me my Flickr Stream needs a complete rebuild and may take “Some hours depending on the size of the photos, and links.” I’ll get over it. 🙂
Birds as Poetry —— Just because I WANDER doesn't mean I'm LOST 
Can’t say I would have thought to see a Rail at the Gym. A wonderful sighting and series of images!
Yes, so much rain, the grass is growing a pace. Hard to pick a time to be out doing anything!
I hope Flickr gets your account sorted out soon, it is very frustrating!
Seems that each time they try to improve something, a dozen other things go wrong!
Dave N
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G’day,
Yep we were a bit more than suprised. But I guess it shows how mobile they are.
Good to catch up at the shoppies today, hope the Tassie trip for the lad is a success. Well done him (them)
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Gorgeous pics David
Well I remember my first sighting, 20 odd years ago at Goonawarra Golf Course, Sunbury …we didn’t know what this gorgeous bird was… it popped out of one of the watery traps…so always a favourite
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Ha, so funny. I have a friend in Brisbane who has them come out of the drain area along his backyard and feed of WillowPattern plates he has on the lawn. So incongruous.
Guess the rain has been of some benefit.
Seeya
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Beautiful captures David, they are a striking beautiful bird, and what a surprise find. These birds are like that, they just turn up unexpectedly. My daughter-in-law sent me a pic the other day for ID while at a tea house, she saw it in the garden. My encounters have been the same in Wagga. However, Lord Howe Island have them running all over the place, and quite brave to come for a feed. As for your Flickr problem, the same happened to my Facebook accounts, including my books sale one. However I worked out how the culprit did it and dismantled their bogus site where they held my images ransom, and systematically removed them. I have since not used Facebook as they were no help at all. The culprit will have used a username very similar to your own. I was told to dismantle my Flickr account as that is where the trouble appears to stem from. Hope the weather improves, we are in the midst of heatwaves and unpredictable storms at present placing birding on hold.
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Thanks Ashley,
I don’t have any real ‘images’ on flickr, the ones I do I put up without attribution, so they can be used for various projects.
What is frustrating me is the merry-go-round dodging the issues by the Flickr staff. The repsonses are all very politically correct, but all point in the same direction. They have problems they haven’t addressed, but like Optus and the other hacks, its easier to obfuscate than send in techs.
My file is being ‘rebuilt’ and I’ll have to supply new log ins and passwords and other tech stuff. Flickr doesn’t seem to have a two-factor system that I can find, so everything is done by smoke and mirrors.
The rail was a big find. Probably the least likely bird we’ve seen this year. Fun day out.
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Beautiful captures David, they are a striking beautiful bird, and what a surprise find. These birds are like that, they just turn up unexpectedly. My daughter-in-law sent me a pic the other day for ID while at a tea house, she saw it in the garden. My encounters have been the same in Wagga. However, Lord Howe Island have them running all over the place, and quite brave to come for a feed. As for your Flickr problem, the same happened to my Facebook accounts, including my books sale one. However I worked out how the culprit did it and dismantled their bogus site where they held my images ransom, and systematically removed them. I have since not used Facebook as they were no help at all. The culprit will have used a username very similar to your own. I was told to dismantle my Flickr account as that is where the trouble appears to stem from. Hope the weather improves, we are in the midst of heatwaves and unpredictable storms at present placing birding on hold.
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What a delightful find for you both. As for Flickr ….! A little while ago I went in and it told me that none of my friends had posted anything for me to look at but here were some other people I might be interested in. I have just checked again and it seems some people have posted images after all – what a surprise.
I do hope they get on with sorting out your site for you. I did see and comment on the last image you put up there, so at least that worked.
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Hello Eleanor,
I think I took more Buff-banded Rails in an hour than in total 10years. :-).
What impressed us the most was the bird’s total relaxed approach. Only time it scampered away was to move to a fresh feeding spot. The laws in this area are a metre or more lower than the surrounding carpark and main open paddocks so it really is a little shallow crake pond in its own right, ephemeral, but fortunate.
The Flickr drama is a sad, tedious and depressing story.
Reading some of the blog posts on Flickr its obvious that something has been broken. Yet, given the numbers of people on Flickr the number of complaints is quite small and I suppose it’s a numbers game for them.
The service I’ve had from the Helpful Heros has been of a very high standard and I can’t complain about that. They will rebuild the my database and probably reset password login etc and I’ll have to re do prefs and the like.
My feed only showed the work of one person. And their contacts, I take it, as I didn’t bother exploring much beyond going, “Bother”. I posted the last pic, but never saw it appear. I then logged out and began sending the help emails.
Will wait a couple of days when I get a response its back and then will tepidly make an excursion.
I’ve already decided to delete most of the images on the stream, cut down the number of contacts and remove most of the Groups. All my digital images are stored elsewhere, so I’m not going to lose anything I only upload a small size image to flickr anyway.
So thanks for the support. Weather looks like a bit of a turn for better and we’ve all got a little seasonal celebration to get on with.
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Hi David,
Good luck with it. After sending that message I went in to Flickr and called you up from my Friends list. Your site looks fine to me, ie nobody else’s images mixed up with yours on the first page, though I didn’t go beyond that.
I keep my images below the 1,000 mark as I think they charge too much, and anyway, like you, it isn’t where I store my images. I did suggest to them a couple of times that they could have an intermediate step between under 1,000 and squillions, but they didn’t seem to think that was a reasonable idea.
Cheers, and happy Christmas to you both,
Eleanor.
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Ahh Goodo. I did a quick check from EE’s stream before and yes looked good. I want to curate it a bit in the next couple if days. Let it settle and then get going again.
Not much to post a present anyway as weather has kept us home
All the best
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