Spiralling Out

Another day, another massive distance! Kuyurnpa is now really exploring far and wide from her birthplace, and over the last 6 days has covered an INCREDIBLE 1200kms! Her roost position tonight was near the north-western corner of Lorna Glen - but before reaching this point she had some travelling to do.

Kuyurnpa left the edge of Lake Carnegie (pictured centre right in the above map) on Wednesday morning and headed north, stopping overnight on what appears (from the aerial photographs) to be a patch of sand dunes, a distance of 200km. She then spent Thursday going south-west, roosting last night just south of a chain of wetlands, which probably still contain water considering the amount of rain which has fallen since January. Today she took of towards home again - does this mean she is heading back to see mum and dad again soon? In three days we will find out. Stay tuned!

Before I sign off - here's a map of Kuyu's movements on a much larger scale, showing the lower half of Western Australia. For the last 9 months we've had to zoom right in to the Lorna Glen study area to look at the small distances covered by our adults (except for Wallu's short walkabout back in January). Here Kuyurnpa is beginning to demonstrate how this species really is capable of covering huge distances in a relatively short space of time. She is just one of the (possibly hundreds) of juvenile wedge-tails who have fledged and begun their independent wandering period in WA this year. I wonder what the others are doing?