Finally had I made the decision to go after the Grey-headed Lapwing. I needed to fit this trip in between work and family commitments, with complicating factors being all 3 members of my family (including myself) coming down with the flu one after the other. In the end, taking advantage of a small window of opportunity and relatively cheap airfares, I had booked myself in to fly to Sydney tonight (Wednesday) after work, and back again on the first flight Friday morning. This would leave me roughly 33 hours in which to drive 1200 km, sleep, eat and see the bird. It was madness.

Anyway, I arrived in Sydney at 9pm Wednesday night, picked up my hire car and drove for about an hour to get out of the city. I had not booked any accommodation but when I pulled off the freeway at Gosford the first motel I saw was advertising $55 rates. So that's where I crashed for the night.

My birthday. We'd spent the night in Hahndorf and had a nice meal. This morning we went for a hike at Mt George, one of the highest-rainfall forests on top of the Mt Lofty Ranges. It had been wet & cold for a few days and this day the temperature didn't rise above 10C. It was drizzling and the forest smelled nice. Not many birds were active under these conditions, but two separate Scarlet Robins brought a bit of color to the grey winter's day. Some Buff-rumped Thornbills and Red-browed Finches were also present. Marcel did quite well clambering over rocks and slippery paths up to the top of the hill, and down again. His biggest excitement was at a point where a little bridge crossed a fast-flowing creek and he exclaimed: “it's got bubbles!”

The Grey-headed Lapwing is still there. Every day I look at options to twicht it but have to fit it in between work and family commitments and it's a 1300 km drive one-way from where I live, or no major airports nearby.

Anyway I was asked by the Hindmarsh Island Landcare Group to run a bird monitoring day on 12 July. The night before I spent in Goolwa and hooked up my laptop to the old phone socket in my motel room to access the internet. Soon enough I found myself looking at options to get to the GHL and there were some bargain fligths to Sydney the next day! My conscience got the better of me, I couldn't let these community people down that were all geared up to do bird monitoring with me.

The next morning we started at 9am, it was cool & dewy and we found lots of birds for people to ID and test different surveying methods. A White-bellied Sea-eagle and a Neophema parrot, most likely a Rock Parrot, were the highlights. As were about 50 New-Zealand Fur Seals in the Murray Mouth with a few guys in wetsuits laying in the water between them!

I was still tempted to go after the GHL and identified a window of opportunity in the next few days. I rang my wife but she wasn't impressed. It would mean me being away for 2 or 3 days. Considerations included childcare arrangements and our 2 1/2 yr old son coming down with a cold. So I did the right (?) thing and canned the idea.

A Grey-headed Lapwing (GHL) has turned up in Burren Junction, a godforsaken place in the middle of nowhere in NSW 6 hrs E of Sydney. It's a first for Oz and it's already been hanging around in the same spot for a few weeks. I'm sorely tempted to go and twicht it but have to fit it in between work and family commitments.

Picked up a new scope today, but unfortunately not for me! It's one of the new, leight-weight Kowa scopes. Much better quality than mine! The good thing is you can mix & match the oculair and body with my scope's components. They're starting to become like computers – the moment you buy one, a new and better model has hit the shelves…

Another frosty and foggy morning as I drove down to Murray Bridge for work meetings. I had an hour to spare in between commitments and went to a nearby young arboretum where a Spotted Nightjar had been roosting for a while now. Trevor Hampel's blog has details. I wandered around in the wet grass and discovered a hole in my shoe. Despite his directions I couldn't find the bird. I rang Trevor and he provided me with GPS coordinates. Once I realized I was about 150 m too far to the south I had no trouble locating the bird. It was roosting on the ground partly under a shrub. Absolutely amazing camouflage these birds have. I took lots of digital pictures – will post one soon. I spent the rest of the day in the office with one soggy sock.

I was up at 5:15 this morning. We've had some cold nights, down to -5C, which is quite extreme for South Australian circumstances. Fortunately this morning it was a few degrees above 0. I took a client to Gluepot. Scarlet-chested Parrots had been seen for almost two months now, and this was one of the targets. Unfortunately the parrots hadn't been seen the last few days. I told the client the bad news. He decided that rather than wasting valuable early-morning time looking for parrots that were unlikely to be there, we should go after the Red-lored Whistler instead, which I've only ever missed once. And indeed we got excellent views of a brilliant Red-lored Whister. Other good birds we found today were Black-eared Miner (more about that bird later), Striated Grasswren, Chestnut Quail-thrush. As we only had 1/2 a day things were a bit rushed – a whole day would've been better but we still got some of the other mallee specialities such as Inland Thornbill, Gilbert's Whistler, Mulga Parrot, Mallee Ringneck, Spotted Nightjar, White-browed Treecreeper etc.