Outback - Part 4

Our last day in Alice dawned bright and sunny!! At last we were going to be able to do some "proper" birding. We headed out early, going McDonnell Ranges west of Alice. 1st stop was Simpson's Gap, a tiny gorge through the range. We were the second car there, and hoped that the birds hadn't been disturbed too much. But the sun wasn't shining into the gorge yet, so it was still bitterly cold and hardly anything was moving. We spotted a small movement in the rocks, and there was a Black-flanked Rock-wallaby. As the sun started to warm the gorge, so the tour buses started to arrive, and signaled that it was time to move on. On the way back to the car I flushed a pair of Collared Sparrowhawks, one of which wheeled around behind a large ghost gum, but didn't come out the other side. Investigation showed he/she was sitting on a nest.

As we drove west we stopped at an interesting creek. The hillsides were full of flowers, and also a few birds including this stunning Red-backed Kingfisher. West again, the next stop was Ormiston Gorge. The gorge goes through to a natural pound, and the slopes and valleys here are full of interesting birds. At the beginning of the gorge were some Grey-headed Honeyeaters busily investigating the flowers. As we walked along the first valley, we could hear the high pitched calls of Dusky Grasswrens. I spotted one, then a pair, but they would not come too close. I tried "pishing", but ne response, so I played a short snatch of their song, and they immediately came to see who was on "their patch". We continued along the track, and eventually got to the rim of the pound. The view was stunning, as was the walk back through a lovely valley. We spent much more time at Ormiston than we had planned, and so had to head back to Alice to begin the journey home.