The Adelaide and Mary River Floodplains are a region comprising the adjoining floodplains of the Adelaide and Mary Rivers in the Top End of

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

’s Northern Territory. It lies east of the city of

Darwin Darwin may refer to: Common meanings * Charles Darwin (1809–1882), English naturalist and writer, best known as the originator of the theory of biological evolution by natural selection * Darwin, Northern Territory, a territorial capital city i ...

and west of Kakadu National Park and the Alligator Rivers IBA, where the rivers flow northwards through seasonally inundated tropical lowlands into the Van Diemen Gulf.

Birds

The floodplains have been identified by

BirdLife International BirdLife International is a global partnership of non-governmental organizations that strives to conserve birds and their habitats. BirdLife International's priorities include preventing extinction of bird species, identifying and safeguarding ...

as an

Important Bird Area An Important Bird and Biodiversity Area (IBA) is an area identified using an internationally agreed set of criteria as being globally important for the conservation of bird populations. IBA was developed and sites are identified by BirdLife Int ...

(IBA) because they support over 1% of the world populations of several species of waterbirds, including magpie geese (up to 800,000), wandering whistling ducks (188,000),

pied heron The pied heron (''Egretta picata''), also known as the pied egret is a bird found in coastal and subcoastal areas of monsoonal northern Australia as well as some parts of Wallacea and New Guinea. Taxonomy The species was originally described ...

s (2000), red-necked avocets (3000), little curlews (12,000), Far Eastern curlews (1050), and sharp-tailed sandpipers (2500). There are large breeding colonies containing 30,000 mixed waterbirds, significant numbers of bush stone-curlews and 11 species that either have restricted ranges or are confined to savanna biomes.

References

Rivers of the Northern Territory Important Bird Areas of the Northern Territory Wetlands of the Northern Territory Floodplains of Australia {{NorthernTerritory-river-stub