Glorious Bustard...

What started as a rather quiet morning ended with a real rush.
Today was Tish's last morning of a six day rotation so having dropped the children off to school I returned to Holmes Jungle, a site which is rapidly becoming one of my favourite places.
The walk round was not massively productive although anywhere that offers views like this can't be bad...

My pictures really don't do the place justice.
As is often the case though the birds really took off when I was within sight of the car. I stopped to look at a butterfly when I half heard a call that sounded like Rainbow Pitta - a bird that I really want to see. I got my phone out to listen to the call that I had on the digital field guide and was less convinced when one flew in and called in response to the calls coming from the phone! Not being a fan of tape luring I stopped the recording and the live pitta promptly flew off again - not brilliant views but a pitta none the less and encouragement for for future visits. Whilst I was waiting for it to re-appear at least two Arafura Fantails came to investigate and showed off in front of me although the light was too bad for my camera.
It was clear that the Pitta had gone so quite happy with my lot I walked the last 20 yards to my car and was just about to leave when a couple of birders from New South Wales turned up. As is the way with birders you start talking about what you have seen and where, they were gutted to have missed the pitta but in passing mentioned a A********* B****** that they had just seen no more than 15 kilometres away. having done my research I knew that this was not common this close to the city - indeed the closest regular population was a good 160km south so I made hasty goodbyes and shot off down the road, not really expecting to see it but not wanting to miss a chance.
The directions were vague as they had not realised the significance of the sighting this close to Darwin so all I had to go on was that it was on the left hand side of the road when heading north towards the city, between Palmerston and Lagoon Road in a field with several Straw-necked Ibis. Amazingly there was only one field that seemed to fit that description that I could see when I was driving south so I turned round and pulled up off the road and sure enough there it was....

A female Australian Bustard - a large and very impressive bird:

When Tish came in from work she was so impressed that we went straight out but unfortunately there was no sign of her, just 12 Australian Pratincoles that were too distant to get any pictures. It turns out that the bustard may have been in the area since the 7th so we will probably try again tomorrow.
What a bird!