Winter time is here

OK all things are relative I accept but this morning was decidedly chilly - it got down to 14 degrees over night and peaked at a lowly 28, I seriously thought about not putting on shorts! Tish chose today to go and swim after work in the hospital pool - she had intended to yesterday but left work 90 minutes late and came home instead. The pool being outside is not heated so wild horses could not have dragged me into the water - Tish however did 20 laps of the 25m pool and is now complaining she is stiff!
Cameron and I having dropped Xanthe and Hamish off at school then went on to Knuckey Lagoon where two things were noticeable - the water level is continuing to drop and waterfowl numbers are rising.
Today there were 18 Magpie Geese, 20 Wandering Whistling Duck, 9 Pacific Black Duck and 120+ Green Pygmy Geese.

Magpie Geese are quite striking birds.

Pacific Black Ducks apart from their striking head patterns are very much like female Mallards.

As the water levels drop so wader numbers and diversity will start to increase. Today there were two Australian Pratincoles and 11 Black-winged Stilts. I managed to get a couple of vaguely decent shots of four of the stilts..

As the number of potential prey items increases so do the number and diversity of raptors on site, today we saw Whistling, Black and Brahminy Kites, Brown Goshawk, Brown Falcon and Swamp Harrier. It is noticeable that Harriers cause the same effect over here are they do in the UK - namely everything panics irrespective as to whether they are in danger or not.
I managed to get some nice shots of a Whistling Kite.

and before I hear shouts of but its not flying so wheres the challenge I tried to get some pictures of the Swamp Harrier but only managed one ( a tree got in the way)

I also had a try at getting some better photos of some finches but they move too fast for the digiscoping set up, these are the best I could manage with the first one being a young Crimson Finch and the second a Double Barred Finch.

Tomorrow is Tish's day off so we are doing a few things in town and then Friday is the start of her next four night shifts - over the holiday weekend which is a real shame!