Sime Forest 02Nov07

From Con

I arrived at Rifle Range car park at 6 am, and walked to the clearing with the stream and the PUB shed, arriving about 6:20 am. Along the way the Brown Boobooks and the Sunda Scops-owls were calling.

At the clearing I tried calling both owls. The scops-owl didn't respond, but the brown hawk flew in to check me out. Then a second one flew in. One was in the tree right over my head, and when I put the torch on him he flew off. The other one was high in a tree on the left, and let me take a couple of snap shots. But it was too far and the light no good so the picture isn't good (I tried to fix the eye shine, not very well), but anyway it was real interesting to see the owl again. Definitely these are the fellows we saw in the bird race. Photo taken at 6:22 am.

Then I went on to the babbler area. The Short-tailed Babbler started calling at 6:43 am and continued calling until 7:40 am when I left. I walked up and down the trail. Sometimes the babbler was deep inside and other times close to the trail. There were at least two babblers calling. At a point in the trail 170 paces before the intersection with the trail going left to Venus drive there is a white porcelain pile of rubbish on the left just off the trail. I built a cairn with a red brick and a couple of pieces of white porcelain. Looks like an old broken toilet or wash basin. It's not biodegradable so it remain there for a long time. Just here I flushed a babbler who was on the trail. Maybe the same fellow we flushed during the bird race. He was not calling.

The broken toilet spot seems to be the epicenter of the babbler calling area. But I could never see the fellow.