Its the weekend..

....so that can only mean one thing - yep Tish on night shifts again!
I had meant to get up early and go for a walk to Buffalo Creek but in the end did not.
Instead I took the children over to Knuckey mid-morning so that Tish could get back to sleep prior to her shift.
As is the case in the UK in mid winter everything starts to quiet down - although unlike the UK mid winter was a 31oC temp with a nice cool breeze!
The water levels are starting to drop off very noticeably on the lagoon which is a good indicator that in the much drier interior water levels will be dropping even further which will push more birds towards the wetter coastal strip in the next few weeks. In addition as the breeding season in the northern hemisphere starts to draw to the end (particularly in the high arctic) some of the early failed breeders  will start to trickle in before the big spring influx from September onwards.
What was noticeable today was that some species are starting to increase in numbers - particularly Magpie Goose (40+ on the lagoons at the moment) and Galah (two flocks each over 25 feeding on the edge of the lagoon all morning).

All that said any time that you can go somewhere and watch pratincoles feed can't be bad. Unfortunately my camera set up does not really allow me to get any photos of them in flight - when circumstances allow I will update my camera set up! Another failing is the shutter speed, am struggling to take anything decent of the smaller more active birds, but it is a great excuse to keep going back and trying!
The undoubted avian highlight today though were the two Brolga that flew in and landed - unfortunately they landed on the area of marsh that is used regularly by the spoonbills and as such completely out of sight!!
Anyway these are the best from today:

Australian Pratincole

Australian White Ibis

Lets hope the Brolga re-appear tomorrow, or the Jabiru that flew through as well!