Darling River, Bourke

Despite the muddiness from recent rain, and the long term effects of drought still visible in the trees' health, this river (above the weir) shaped up as beautiful and supporting a fine array of birds. Most evident were the whistling kites, corellas, egrets (great and intermediate), a white-necked heron, a white-faced heron, a lonely yellow-billed spoonbill who perched on a dead tree beside the river near the tourist boat for a good hour and a half. There was a thrush at every creek and waterhole, martins and swallows and the ubiquitous black kite who flashes his forked tail just often enough to identify him.