Birds can turn up at any place , any time. Here today gone tomorrow . Some e.g I have seen.
Crimson Chat. ( male ). Bonny hills ( Mid north coast )
Pink Cockatoos. Flying with Little Corellas 40 so years ago, menangle river Very dry years at the time.
Black Falcon. Chasing quail old northern road. Narellen
Blue Bonnet. Breeding. Australia Wonderland before it was built. Old air force base I think at the time
Swift Parrots Greystanes. Feeding on lerps
Yellow-tufted honeyeaters Thirmere
So what is common
This is just the Sydney basin . What have you seen!
Two I didn't expect to see at my place are
The ones standing out from your list Nightowl are definitely the Black Falcon (what year?), Pink Cockatoos, Crimson Chat and Blue Bonnet.
Gosh, I can imagine a Black Falcon for sure and the Swift Parrots.
Seen Swift Parrots at Penrith on the grounds of a child care center in September 2008. Crimson Chat in Sydney Park, Chippendale in 2008 (male/female), three immature Spotted Harrier this summer just gone. Pied Butcherbird at Bakers Lagoon, Richmond in August 2010.
Windhover by the way great shots of the owls, Black falcon not sure of the year ,but I will never forget the way at which it made its approach , it was so low to the ground just above the grass ,as it came up to a wire fence it seemed to just float over it then back down to grass level. I could not see what it was after until the prey was flushed. ( 20 or so years ago ) As for the Major Mitchell, my grandfather was a bird trapper and I was about nine years old and would follow him on many trips away over the years .We would set up very early in morning and use a call bird ( Little corella ) different birds for different traps. That was a long time ago when I was a young boy and had no idea of the impact and I do not and would not dream of doing this today but that's how it was back then. For me to come out and say this on an open forum - it hurts.!
Nightowl
See it! Hear it!
Mid-North Coast NSW
I guess it's the reality of our history as a nation, Nightowl. I was reading in Jack & Lindsay Cupper's Hawks in Focus yesterday how they had to set up a camera hide 3 times to get shots of brown goshawks (I think they were) breeding because egg collectors stole the first 2 batches of eggs laid. Fortunately, there's a lot more awareness of the damage done by such dastardly deeds. (Egg collecting, that is, not setting up camera hides). However, what might be needed now is for more people to put that awareness into action.
No worries Nightowl. When I was a kid still in Hungary in the 70s and early 80s, I used to read books about hunting and safaris and never thought of the impact people had on the environment then. After spending a few years spearfishing off Sydney's Eastern Suburbs in the late 80s early 90s I took up scuba diving and photography underwater. Shoot them with a camera I say. Times change, people change and I think we all change for the better. Cheers mate.
Adrian, I know a man, who was photographing Major Mitchell Cockatoos at a nest on a private property and told me how people came to steal the chicks, yet he did nothing about it, despite knowing that the landowner gave them permission to do so. Gutless! All just for photos and did not care for the welfare of Australian Native Wildlife. Shame on him! He still has articles published that I am aware of in magazines!
Shame on him, indeed, Windhover. Would a letter to the editor of the magazine exposing this heinous behaviour be appropriate?