Budgie Tornado - Wonders of The Monsoon

It had been an extremely hot dry season and I hoped to find one of the outbacks greatest, and most unpredictable, natural spectacles, one that only occurs every few years and might only last a few days. After many weeks of searching, I eventually located a potential waterhole outside the town of Alice Springs in central Australia. It was dawn and as the sun rose I could see black amorphous clouds building on the horizon, these were budgerigars. The clouds grew bigger, moving closer towards me. Within minutes the air was electric with the beats of more than 80,000 tiny pairs of wings. It was a budgie tornado - they had found water, but it wasn’t long before the raptors arrived.