Weekends That Were - December 2022

  24.12.22

Seven Mile Lagoon, Lockyer valley

Mr P had offered to go look for the Oriental Pratincoles that had been at Seven Mile for several weeks. 

He picked me up just after 5 and we were parking up a little over an hour later. The morning was cloudy, warm, almost windless. We wanted to ‘get it over with’ in reality, because it can get very hot and uncomfortable in the valley area and, even though only 21c, was already humid. Mr P had already seen the birds a few weeks earlier and so led the way through the long, wet grass/weeds and out onto the sticky muddy margins of the flooded field. 

There were heaps of Royal Spoonbills, Masked Lapwings, Great and Intermediate Egrets, Australian White and Straw-necked Ibis, White-faced Herons, Grey Teal and lesser numbers of White-headed Stilts and Glossy Ibis. We also had a single Jabiru.

We stopped and scanned several times looking closely at the distant muddy lumps, some surrounded by water, without success.

As we moved around the end of the ‘lake’ Mr P called ‘There’s one, now’ and we binned a single bird having taken off fairly close to our location and watched it fly into the distance. It wasn’t much of a view, but a tickable Oriental Pratincole - a lifer for me. 

We trudged on, still scanning every 100 meters or so until we reached a barbed wire fence extending from the water’s edge. We agreed we would go no further – there were cattle in the next paddock and the potential Pratincole habitat ‘ran out’ in three  hundred meters or so anyway.

Instead we set up and scanned again. Mr P found a bird perched up a couple of hundred meters away. It was very nervous and looked uncomfortable – it wasn’t our presence that caused it to be so, we were far too far away. As we watched it – and it called several times – another two birds flew in and landed and we, eventually, found both of them. Another one ‘appeared’ to make a total of 4 birds. Good scope views at maximum focus, almost impossible for photos, although I did try.

We hiked back to the car, arriving at 8.15, job done! 

We stopped off at The Rare Pear for breakfast.