avondale87 wrote in post #19438903
Very nice Pippan
Not sure a juvenile has been posted on POTN before.
I looked up Fogg dam. See it's a fair way from Darwin.
I'd imagined the top end would be teeming with bird life even right into Darwin
Never been there so really ignorant comment on my behalf
Thanks Richard. Apart from looking cute, you can tell it's a juvenile by its lack of streaming tail feathers and lack of black under the chin.
Fogg Dam is a fair way, about 50 minute's drive and I live 20 minutes from the city, so about half an hour for me. There are lots of birds right in Darwin though, even those Gouldians and other finches we've been posting are on the edge of suburbia. We have no feral birds either, so that helps. But what makes Fogg Dam so special is it's a vast yet accessible freshwater floodplain, teeming with not only water birds and jungle birds but also water pythons, native rats, fish, turtles, and a few crocodiles and water buffalo. It is a very low, long dam wall just a few metres high that was built around 1960 to collect water for a failed rice-growing project nearby and has since attracted myriad birds.
Just a kilometre or so from the Gouldians' hangout is the beach at Lee Point, a stopover for a great range of migratory birds that have bred in Siberia and fly down to Oz to escape the harsh northern winter. They're just starting to arrive now.
Still waiting for the wisdom they promised would be worth getting old for.
