Kakadu’s Yellow water boat tours in ‘Yegge’, the first of the 3 Bininj dry seasons
Kakadu magic - a late wet season topped up the wetlands, as waters drop the reveal upstream on river right is an ongoing festival of flowers! Thousands of ‘Andem’ water lilies - white and purple, some Lotus lilies about.
Downstream on river left the floodplain is kinda a huge rice paddy! A green crop with feathery yellow seed heads. Yes Australia has 4 species of rice - Australian rice! Rice soon to be food for young magpie geese - ‘bamaru’. Amid this rice paddy is a feeding frenzy of egret, ibis, spoonbill, heron and ‘big bird’ the Jabiru hunt fish, with a few crocs about.
The Jabiru… one awesome bigbird!
The Jabiru …. in Australia we don’t technically have the Jabiru… the actual Jabiru bird is a heavily built South American stork, with a very unflattering flabby fat neck lacking any feathers. Our bird is also a stork and has a far prettier neck, when seen in ideal lighting 'a iridescent shimmering green and purplish sheen' to quote Morcombe’s field guide. But viewed from a distance in bright light the colours appear black - hence the official name is the Black-necked stork. The South American Jabiru can be found here - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jabiru I would love to know how our stork came to be known as a Jabiru?
In local language Australia's stork is djakarna. See the Bininj Kunwok dictionary here .
In local language Australia's stork is djakarna. See the Bininj Kunwok dictionary here .
Yellow spotted monitor - Varanus panoptes panoptes
Over the last few seasons we have been seeing a small number of these impressive goannas. At season's start we would see one regularly in June, but i fear the Cane toad is still killing them. Back in the early 2000s a research scientist had trapped and had radio tracking ability for a huge sample size of goannas in Kakadu, he had 105 individuals - but sadly documented all of them poisoned from trying to eat toads. This must be up there as the saddest piece of research into Australia's biodiversity in recent times.