Day 54 of lockdown. I was keen to observe the Rails again at Sydney Park and organised an afternoon there for exercise and recreation with Sue. The previous week we had met up at Centennial Park for some bird observing, but with my exercise and recreation area being reduced to 25% that park was out of bounds for me.
Lewin’s Rail
So we met up near the big chimneys and then walked around the park seeing what birds we could spot.
The Black Swan family were in the Island Pond. The cygnets are growing quickly.
Here is one of the Australasian Grebes in the large pond –
And a train of Dusky Moorhens –
Here is a Noisy Miner doing some acrobatics –
And a few shots of the Welcome Swallows –
We walked around a fair bit of the park, looking for other birds like Quail and Tiny Frogmouths without any luck. But our main aim was to see the Rails, and in this we were very successful. We soon spotted a Buff-banded Rail. We saw this one relatively early at 2:37 pm.
In the same area, was a much more commonly seen member of the rail family – an Australian Swamphen.
Back to the Buff-banded Rail. It was around for a few minutes.
We next saw the Buff-banded Rail at 3:40 pm.
We had been hearing a Lewin’s Rail calling in the inaccessible frog pond. It called quite a few times, but even though we walked closer, there was little chance of seeing it in the thick reeds.
Back at the more open area where we had been watching the Buff-banded Rail, we saw a Lewin’s Rail emerge from the vegetation at 4:16 pm.
It was visible for about 1 minute. We had been lucky!
The Buff-banded Rail repaired about ten minutes later.
And another interloper – a Magpie Lark –
The Buff-banded Rail was around a fair bit.
We were just about to leave, around 5 pm, when the Buff-banded Rail was joined by a second one. I whipped my camera back out and we were lucky to observe some amazing behaviour. One of the Rails was chasing the other. I assume they are male and a female. The female disappeared and the male followed.
Then, the one in front, turned up again. I had run right around the base of a large tussock. The second one was still following. Both were running. They completed this circuit around the tussock quite a few times while we watched.
After a few minutes of this, the front one must have given the second one the slip, and only one was visible. But a few minutes later, both were together and we watched them disappear into thick vegetation – this time they walked slowly.