May it rain, let it flow.

The Macquarie River is still hurting. The southern Macquarie Marshes Nature Reserve looks like it’s down for the count.

Despite heavy rainfalls in the central west of NSW since Christmas, there’s still relatively little water around. On one hand it’s what you might expect. I mean, they don’t call them ‘arid-zone rivers’ for nothing. Do they?

On the other hand, there’s so many competing water users, and there’s been so many changes to the catchment since European development began, there should be more water on the ground.

Until April this year, a modest environmental allocation is being delivered to the Northern Nature Reserve to support a small colony of intermediate egrets that are nesting along one of the creeks. We’re hoping to go in this afternoon to take a look. In the meantime, here’s some photos from our adventures this week.

Click here to view the gallery


New ticks
Stubble Quail
Black Falcon
Orange Chat
Plum-headed finch

10 Responses to “May it rain, let it flow.”

  1. Dunc says:

    Nice photos my brother.

  2. Tim from BB says:

    What’s the bird with the green feathers within the brown feathers?

    On a slightly different track, has anyone told you about front page of the Townsville Bulletin today?

  3. ylm says:

    these are just wonderful.
    how about some id info - i tried to look up the wattle - do you know how many wattles there are?
    and as for the frogs!
    particularly like the way you have done the orange chat photo - very sweet

  4. tom says:

    Why the hell didn’t I get the whole front page? Ripped off!
    http://www.townsvillebulletin.com.au/article/2008/03/06/11152_newsphoto.html

    Looks like it’s all happening up there at the moment.
    http://www.townsvillebulletin.com.au/article/2008/03/14/11405_news.html
    http://www.townsvillebulletin.com.au/article/2008/03/06/11152_newsphoto.html

  5. tom says:

    Oh and the bird was a Common Bronzewing - until we ran it over :(

  6. Rodders says:

    Dude, that pic of the two chats in the same shot is pretty cool!

    I wonder if they’ll start putting some of those warnings around the waterfall (translated into German and Japanese like the croc warnings… you never know with all those germans around!).

  7. zoe says:

    probably need to do the signs in American too.

  8. ylm says:

    read something today that reckoned on over 900 wattles worldwide

  9. ylm says:

    your link to the wetlands and river website is really worth a look.
    explains what you are all doing in easy to understand language
    thanks

  10. tom says:

    This is the area about my work in particular. The menus make it a little tricky to find.
    http://www.wetrivers.unsw.edu.au/docs/rp_mm_fish_home.html

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