The morning started once again at Round Hill Nature Reserve where things were a bit more productive. Again, saw some new birds but nothing wanted to cooperate for the camera, a theme for the day. Nevil and I spent the entire morning and part of the early afternoon exploring the reserve looking for a couple target species. We dipped (birding word for missed) on most of them but did find a Splendid Fairy-wren though the male was not in breeding plumage and probably the best bird of the day, a Gilbert's Whistler. Again, no photographs though.
Idid hit a milestone myself as far as lifelists go. Today, a Rufous Whistler was my 500th species in the world. I have 352 in North America, a handful in Europe and the rest from here in Australia. It's seems like a big number and a lot of species, but when you consider there are about 9,600 species of birds in the world, I have seen only about 5%. If things go great this year and I get a lot of lucky breaks, I could be approaching 1,000 by this time next year which would be a bit more exciting.
Anyway, today was a decent day for birding and a pretty poor one for photographing. Birds in general seemed skittish and we just couldn't get out lenses on hardly anything. Idid manage a shot of some Malee Ringnecks, a type of parrot rigth after sunrise and that ended up being the best photo of the day. Tomorrow we are heading home and hope to see a few more species because our trip list is at 99 and Nevil's goal was 140 species. Idon't think we have much of a chance of getting that but hopefully we can at least get to the century mark.
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