April 2019 Field Visit – Riverina in Drought

I keep going on about the drought, but it really is the most visible thing out here these days. Most of my wildlife encounters these last few months have been of roadkill, of animals moving across country to find food and water and being hit by vehicles, and other animals going for the roadkill and getting hit in turn. I haven’t wanted to photograph those for my blog. I’m sure if I looked hard enough I could find something alive to show you, but everywhere I turn all I see is dust. We had a nice little rainstorm about a week ago, but it won’t mean much unless there’s follow-up this season.

And on that depressing note, here are some photos I took around the region this month, which show just how stark it is out here.

Emu in woodland, Darlington Point. No grass or groundcover.

January 2017 Field Visit – Yarradda Lagoon

Welcome to 2017!

My year got off to an exciting start when I was contacted by someone from the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage (OEH) asking me if I’d like to visit one of their environmental watering project sites with some field officers doing a wetlands health survey. Naturally I said yes, and so last Tuesday I headed to Yarradda lagoon (within the Yarrada precinct of the Murrumbidgee Valley National Park) near Darlington Point with four field officers: two from OEH and two from Charles Sturt University (CSU).

July’s roadside birds

It’s a week later than I’d hoped to get these up, but here are my roadside birding pics from my aborted attempt at a field trip in July.

Birds on a wire near Coleambally. They flew off before I managed to get a good view of them, and I can’t ID them from this photo, it’s possible they’re introduced Blackbirds (Turdus merula).

Long-billed Corellas (Cacatua tenuirostris) at Darlington Point.