Last night's strong winds had fallen off this morning leaving a spectacular morning and gorgeous sunrise. I had decided to spend a night on the Nullarbor Plain in order to try and photograph to species of birds, a Slender-billed Thornbill and the Nullarbor race of the Cinnamon Quail-Thrush. I had no problem locating the Slender-billed Thornbills and they proved extremely cooperative as I was able to get a lot of photos of them fairly easily. These are a different subspecies than the one I photographed at Port Gawler a few days ago.
My second target, the Nullarbor Quail-Thrush proved to be more difficult. These birds are an extremely colorful race of the Cinnamon Quail-Thrush which I have seen a while back. Since these are such a beautiful subspecies, I had hoped to see them. However, I couldn't find them in the area I had camped. I decided to get on the road and headed back to the highway along the track. On my way back, I managed to flush a pair of the Quail-Thrushes from the highway. I got poor views, just enough to tell they were the Quail-Thrush and I couldn't relocate the birds so obviously no photos.
I got on the road and headed west crossing into Western Australia by midmorning. From here, I didn't have much farther until I arrived at Eyre Bird Observatory at the old Eyre Telegraph Station. This observatory is run by Birds Australia and is located on the coast, just behind the dunes, south of the Eyre Highway. I will be spending the next two nights here and look forward to photographing the birds that come in to drink at the bird baths around the station.
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