Runnin’ over the same old ground · What have we found? The same old fears · Wish you were here.

I have been a lifelong fan of Pink Floyd, as evidenced by a blurry photograph of an awkward teenager in Surrey, England (photo below, if you dare to look). At 0400 this morning I was inwardly reciting these lyrics to an invisible Barn Owl at Kedron. I was also reciting them to an invisible Grass Owl. This was the second time I have dipped on this Tyto duo at this site, and it was starting to get me down. “Why don’t you go at dusk?” I hear you cry, dear reader. Indeed you have a very good point, except that dusk is a really tricky time for me, with the kids’ dinner usually being at 1740 or so – an unpopular and strategically unwise time for me to be out of the house. Maybe in mid-winter I’ll be able to do some dusk jaunts for owls. For now I’m getting up stupidly early to chase night birds, and getting thoroughly cheesed off with it. I had some good views of Black flying-fox.

As the light of dawn flickered across the wetland, I had one last hopeless stand, and then retreated to the car and headed north up the M1 to Tinchi Tamba. I reasoned there was no point in looking for yesterday’s Black Falcon at dawn, so instead I tried the Typha beds around First Lagoon for Little Grassbird. I got onto a grassbird almost straight away skulking low down in the reeds, but it turned out to be a Tawny. No sign of Little here or in the Typha beds on the right hand side of Wyampa Rd heading towards Tinchi. Arriving at the yellow gate, I walked straight out to the peninsula, with Nankeen Kestrel and Black Falcon in my sights. Presently Rod Gardner arrived and we chatted Brisbane birds for a while – at the time I couldn’t remember the seasonal pattern of occurrence for Nankeen Kestrel – see below Rod. He was after Black Falcon as well, and like me, also eventually dipped. We had 16 flyover Topknot Pigeons, a reasonably scarce bird at Tinchi, but scant consolation for missing Black Falcon. I had to leave  at 0900 to get back in time for a family engagement, and I was, to be honest, a bit down in the dumps. Year ticks were being seen all around me, and I had neatly dipped five year birds in one morning just like that. Not a sausage. Nada. Zilch.

The Black Falcon was seen by John Armstrong at lunchtime, and I planned maybe to come back during the middle of the day later in the week or next weekend.

Around lunchtime I saw on the eBird alert that Ross Smith had seen two Scaly-breasted Munias at Fitzgibbon Bushland, the first record of this declining introduced species in Brisbane this year (see this post for a discussion on that species). Ross very kindly gave me directions to where he’d seen the birds, and I headed up there for a mid-afternoon twitch. Ross had seen the Scaly-breasted Munias with a flock of about 35 Chestnut-breasted Mannikins. Presently I found the mannikin flock, but only about 20 birds were there, and I couldn’t see any Scaly-breasted Munias despite searching through the mobile flock for an hour or so. I retreated, very disappointed that I had missed 8 year ticks this weekend.

I guess things can only get better from here.

With no year ticks today, my year list remained on 256 species. I spent 5 hours 18 minutes birding, walked 8.829 km and drove 136.8 km.

Me, volunteering at Nower Wood Nature Reserve in Surrey, England. Some years ago.

Records of Nankeen Kestrel peak in autumn and early winter, with very few records between August and March. I have no idea why this is.

The reporting rate for Nankeen Kestrel appears to have dropped between 2005 and 2017, suggesting a decline in this species, which is now quite rare.