Wednesday, March 20, 2013

NORTHWEST NSW




Travelling east from Brewarrina, over the next couple of weeks we visited various areas while enjoying the spectacular winter weather. These honeyeaters were basking in the sun next to our van at Lightning Ridge.


Blue-faced Honeyeaters


As were this pair of swallows on our washing line, while staying near the farming community of Burren Junction. 
This small town is renowned in the Aussie birding world as the temporary home of a vagrant wader from Asia in 2006, a Grey-Headed Lapwing. I twitched it with three friends, along with probably hundreds of others in the four months it stayed. This record was a first for Australia and possibly the Southern Hemisphere.



Welcome Swallows 


Nothing quite as exciting this time around, although the sunsets were quite impressive.


Sunset at Burren Junction


It also boasts a top free camping site and bore baths with hot water direct from the Great Artesian Basin. Very nice on a cool winters day!






From Narrabri we explored the nearby Nandewar Ranges, the remnants of an ancient basaltic shield volcano, with Mt Kaputar being the highest point.



Red Wattlebird



Mt Kaputar- 1508 metres 



Australian Raven


One of the more spectacular sights was the forty metre high Sawn Rocks, a wall of pentagonal basalt pipes, the remains of a lava flow from the old volcano.


Sawn Rocks


Looking for raptors


The canola crops were flowering under the winter sun and made for a colourful foreground to the rugged ranges.


Nandewar Ranges



Cheers & Happy Birding



4 comments:

  1. Wow those Swan Rocks are amazing! Loved the bird images. Funnily I saw a Red Wattlebird at our work shed in Toowoomba last week, it had been about 6 years since I have seen one. Great photos of your adventures.

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  2. Thanks Judi, glad you liked it and thanks for reading. We are having a break from our travels at the moment with our daughters wedding imminent so posting a backlog of pics & info from the last several months.

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  3. Hey John, it's a nice blog! I'll show arend tonoght, if hes back home from work...he likes birds very much too :)

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  4. Thanks Carin. Glad you enjoyed it. If you haven't seen it already, I have enabled translation on the site too. Cheers, John.

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