Day 17 Gunbower Tues 2 November

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A sleep in to 8.00am yahoo!
The first lesson or talk that I was interested in was at 10.30am. So I had made a slow start to the day and went for a bird watch by myself down to the Gunbower Jetty. When I pulled up in some shade I looked to my right over to the river to see a large bird sitting amongst the willow branches. Which I assumed was a bittern of some short; I quietly got out of the car with camera in hand and crept closer to get some descent pictures all the time thinking I need to get back to the hall to let all the other twitchers know. One more step forward for one more picture I thought, but no the bird took off, I had got too close. So I jumped back in the car and (legally) sped back into town. Burst into the hall and politely interrupted Bob’s talk, with ‘I think I have a bittern down at the jetty does anyone want to see it?’ Hopefully no one got whiplash. John Barkla asked what sort and I said I don’t know. So we all bundled into as few cars as possible and went back. I made every one wait until the last car load had arrived before showing them where the bird had flown to. This gave me time to show some people the pictures I had taken, turned out it was an immature Nankeen Night Heron!! (See photo) I was mortified, I had got everyone down to the river and the bird was not what I thought it was and then I could not find it again!! No one was upset though just happy to get into the sun and glad I had thought of sharing the possibility with the entire group. Bob later approached me and asked if anyone else had seen the bird, because by bird watching rules we could have reported it in our bird list for the weekend and really could have caused quite a stir! But I was the only one to see it.
After we had all settled down with a nice cuppa tea for our nerves, the next lesson started. And it was very interesting too. It was about a program for making slide shows and then burning them to DVD. It’s called proShow Gold and I think I will be checking it out and making a sound quiz to test/educate the HAMBOCA group. The final show that John Stirling showed us, after his demonstration, was brilliant even though he warned us that it was a bit over the top. That brought us to the end of the workshop and all the thankyous and plans for next time. And then of course the crowd broke up and more goodbyes and thankyous were said to all the people I had meet and wanted to keep in touch with.
And the rest of the day as you know was spent writing up my last three blogs. But being interrupted by bird calls and then by a lizard that crawled up the shade cloth on the veranda and peeked at me from above the veranda roof beam. I then heard it scrambling around in the cabin roof which explained what I heard this morning when I woke up. I also arrange where to stay between Gunbower and Hamilton.

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Photos

Nankeen Night Heron
or a Bittern if you try really hard

Galah
its my nest!