An Australian interlude

The sad death of Jenny's mum, Jean, recently (see Jenny's beautiful tribute) has seen us back in Australia for two weeks. 

While Jenny has gone to Wodonga I've had a day in our home town of Hamilton and have enjoyed traveling through rural western Victoria and catching up with a nice selection of Aussie birds.

While we've been away most of Victoria has had record rainfall and most wetlands, swamps and lakes are now nearly full with winter still a month away.  Many of these have been dry for years, some for decades.  Our dry forests are now bursting with new growth and bird populations are sure to get a boost in the coming breeding season.

The farmland is also looking well-watered and late-April is when the countryside tends to look its best.  Hamilton itself was a picture and the overall culture shock of suddenly being back in a rich, prosperous country with all the modern trappings was a bit overwhelming.  Hopefully I will never take it all for granted again.

So although I'm missing my Plantain-eaters and Sunbirds it is great to wake up to Butcherbirds at my Dad's house in Melbourne and see Kookaburras and Currawongs in the forests, flocks of Cockatoos and Corellas along the highways and a host of diverse waterbirds on Lake Linlithgow - my favourite  local wetland.

Here's a pic of the Meredith Forest Reserve (box and stringybark eucalyptus forest) and one of some Royal Spoonbills on the edge of Lake Buninjon.

Melbourne 1 May 2011

The swamps are filling up

In recent weeks we have see the big wet season arrive.  The Bukoba district has two wet seasons - this is the shorter but wetter of the two. The rain now is really important in setting up the rest of the year in terms of food production.  In recent years the rain has been unreliable and production has been down - particularly to our south and west.

This year everyone seems to be happy with a good, old-fashioned wet.  The rain comes 4-5 days per week, usually starting before dawn with a spectacular light show accompaniment.  Typically it eases off by late morning and the afternoon - evening has clear skies.

I have no idea of the amount of rain in these events but now the district is saturated and all the streams are running hard.

Yesterday we took friends Stephanie and Aaron to our favourite swamps on the Ngono River to look or Shoebill.  The usual open swamps have been filled to overflowing and have spilled over into previously dry areas.  This means that the usual concentration of birds (herons, egrets, storks, ducks, etc.) have dispersed throughout the new wetlands and were largely absent at our spot.

We did see a Shoebill but it was deep in the reeds and only occasionally came into view as it hunted fish.

A few photos of the newly expanded wetlands and some other scenery that caught our eyes as we drove home:

Ngono River in flood at Kalabe Bridge

Kemondo town and ferry port, south of Bukoba

Aaron, Stephanie and Jenny looking out over Kemondo

Bukoba, 10 April 2011