In rhe middle of the Aussie Bird Count

The aggregated data is a powerful tool, especially since one in six Australian bird species is now under threat.

22. Our top deck, Valla Beach. 6.10pm

Yellow-tailed black-cockatoos form our top deck

Yellow-tailed black-cockatoo X 43
Satin Bowerbird X2
Noisy Miner X 5
Dollarbird X1
Oriole X 1
Little Wattlebird X 2
Blue-faced Honeyeater X 3
Rainbow Lorikeet X 7
Black-faced Cuckoo shrike X 1
Striated Pardalote X 2
Golden Whistler X 1
Sacred Kingfisher X 2
Catbird X 1
White-throated Gerygone X 2

Last year, more than 57,000 participants tallied a 4 million birds.

23. Yuragir NP near Angourie. 6.40 am

Osprey X 2
Figbird X 2
Grey Shrike Thrush X 3
Rainbow Lorikeet X 2
Golden Whistler X 1
Crow X 2
Magpie X 1
Currawong X 1
Lewin’s Honeyeater X 2
Little Wattlebird X 4
Galah X 2
Dollarbird X 1

I was live on ABC regional radio for my weekly poem. Had to move out into the open, I was breaking up.

I read a poem by Judith Wright is a well-loved Australian poet. She was also an environmentalist and campaigner for Aboriginal land rights. She died in 2000. She wrote many bird poems,

Egrets

Once as I travelled through a quiet evening,
I saw a pool, jet-black and mirror-still.
Beyond, the slender paperbacks stood crowding;
each on its own white image looked its fill,
and nothing moved but thirty egrets wading –
thirty egrets in a quiet evening.

Once in a lifetime, lovely past believing,
your lucky eyes may light on such a pool.
As though for many years I had been waiting,
I watched in silence, till my heart was full
of clear dark water, and white trees unmoving,
and, whiter yet, those thirty egrets wading. (late 1950s Mt Tambourine probably