Lake Woods is an ephemeral freshwater lake in the

Northern Territory The Northern Territory (commonly abbreviated as NT; formally the Northern Territory of Australia) is an Australian territory in the central and central northern regions of Australia. The Northern Territory shares its borders with Western Aust ...

of Australia. It lies on Newcastle Creek close to the small town of Elliott on the

Stuart Highway Stuart Highway is a major Australian highway. It runs from Darwin, in the Northern Territory, via Tennant Creek and Alice Springs, to Port Augusta in South Australia; a distance of . Its northern and southern extremities are segments of Aus ...

, about halfway between Darwin and Alice Springs. It is important as a breeding site for

waterbird A water bird, alternatively waterbird or aquatic bird, is a bird that lives on or around water. In some definitions, the term ''water bird'' is especially applied to birds in freshwater ecosystems, although others make no distinction from seabi ...

Description

There are two near-permanent waterholes on Newcastle Creek - South Newcastle and Longreach – that merge with Lake Woods during major floods, creating a large expanse of open water. The lake basin supports open lignum shrubland and open woodland of

coolibah ''Eucalyptus coolabah'', commonly known as coolibah or coolabah, is a species of tree found in eastern inland Australia. It has rough bark on part or all of the trunk, smooth powdery cream to pink bark above, lance-shaped to curved adult leaves ...

gutta-percha Gutta-percha is a tree of the genus ''Palaquium'' in the family Sapotaceae. The name also refers to the rigid, naturally biologically inert, resilient, electrically nonconductive, thermoplastic latex derived from the tree, particularly from ...

and belalie. River red gums occur around the waterholes. The land in the IBA is covered by two pastoral leases, Newcastle Waters and Powell Creek, both of which are managed by the

Consolidated Pastoral Company The Consolidated Pastoral Company (CPC) is a large, privately owned, Australian Agrifood business which operates 8 cattle stations covering over 3.6m hectares, managing more than 300,000 cattle, in Western Australia, the Northern Territory and ...

. About 8% of the land is managed as the Longreach Waterhole Protected Area by the

Parks and Wildlife Commission of the Northern Territory __NOTOC__ Parks and Wildlife Commission of the Northern Territory (also known as the ''Parks and Wildlife Division'' in some sources) is the Northern Territory Government agency responsible for tasks including the establishment of "parks, reserv ...

in cooperation with the lease managers.BirdLife International. (2011). Important Bird Areas factsheet: Lake Woods. Downloaded from http://www.birdlife.org on 02/08/2011.

Birds

A tract of land, corresponding to the area of the lake when fully inundated, has been identified by BirdLife International as an Important Bird Area (IBA) because it has supported up to 116,000 waterbirds when flooded, including over 1% of the world population of

plumed whistling-duck The plumed whistling duck (''Dendrocygna eytoni''), also called the grass whistling duck, is a whistling duck that breeds in Australia. It is a predominantly brown-coloured duck with a long neck and characteristic plumes arising from its flank ...

s. It also provides habitat for

Australian bustard The Australian bustard (''Ardeotis australis'') is a large ground dwelling bird which is common in grassland, woodland and open agricultural country across northern Australia and southern New Guinea. It stands at about high, and its wingspan is ...

s and

yellow-tinted honeyeater The yellow-tinted honeyeater (''Ptilotula flavescens'') is a species of bird in the family Meliphagidae. It is found in Australia and Papua New Guinea. Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical moist lowland forests and subtropical or trop ...

s. Bird species recorded in substantial numbers include the

Australian pelican The Australian pelican (''Pelecanus conspicillatus'') is a large waterbird in the family Pelecanidae, widespread on the inland and coastal waters of Australia and New Guinea, also in Fiji, parts of Indonesia and as a vagrant in New Zealand ...

Oriental pratincole The oriental pratincole (''Glareola maldivarum''), also known as the grasshopper-bird or swallow-plover, is a wader in the pratincole family, Glareolidae. Etymology The genus name is a diminutive of Latin ''glarea'', "gravel", referring to a ty ...

and

little curlew The little curlew (''Numenius minutus'') is a wader in the large bird family Scolopacidae. It is a very small curlew, which breeds in the far north of Siberia. It is closely related to the North American Eskimo curlew. The word "curlew" is imit ...

. The IBA is the only known inland breeding site in the Northern Territory for

great egret The great egret (''Ardea alba''), also known as the common egret, large egret, or (in the Old World) great white egret or great white heron is a large, widely distributed egret. The four subspecies are found in Asia, Africa, the Americas, and ...

References

Woods Important Bird Areas of the Northern Territory {{NorthernTerritory-geo-stub