Rain, water and nature reserves
There’s been considerable rain in Western NSW over the last few months, including in and around the Macquarie Marshes Nature Reserve. I headed out last weekend to check out the effect on fish. The trip turned out to be a bit of a waste of time because, on account of the rain, driving more than 100m without getting bogged was quite an ordeal. Our University Toyota Hilux, complete with highway tyres, stalled while we were travelling on a dirt road. We slid off the crest and onto the soft, muddy shoulder - coming to rest near a barbed-wire fence. That’s where the car stayed for the following 24 hours. Needless to say, I sent a rather terse email to the ‘vehicles and safety’ guy at the Uni.
Seeing as we couldn’t drive anywhere, we decided to take a ride down the road to the Nature Reserve. There we waded through the water to the bird breeding colony site - there weren’t really many birds, and took a few photos. Later we heard that all the birds are currently at Narran Lakes, where flooding has stimulated the first breeding event since about the year 2000. Several thousand Ibis and other birds are nesting - whether their chicks survive, of course, depends on rainfall over the next month or so. I’ll put up some more photos and some video footage soon.
