Today I birded in a few places around the Central coast (approx. 80 km or one
hour north of Sydney’s CBD) with a number of interesting sightings as
follows:
CHITTAWAY PT/TUGGERAH BAY - Brown Quails (2); Mangrove
Herons; Rufous Night Heron; 2 Banded Stilts (as
reported last week by Alan Morris); Eastern Curlews; Greenshanks;
Brush, Fan-tailed and Channel-billed Cuckoos; Koels;
Pheasant Coucal; Dollarbird; a pair of Black-faced Monarchs
and Striped Honeyeaters
TUGGERAH STW - Hardheads (20 plus); Australasian
Shovelers (3) and Musk ducks (2)
OURIMBAH AREA - Brush Turkey (1); an excellent view of a male
Grey Goshawk flying into and resting in a Eucalypt); several Brown
Cuckoo-doves (feeding on Wild Tabacco); a Wonga Pigeon on nest;
Brush Cuckoo; Cicadabird; Sacred Kingfishers; a male
Rose Robin (posing ready to take a great picture if I had a camera)
Large-billed and Yellow-throated Scrubwrens (the later seen nesting);
several Rufous Fantails; several Black-faced Monarchs; Scarlet
Honeyeaters in abundance; Regent and Satin Bowerbirds; 2 male
Superb Lyrebirds in full display (one was displaying in front of me for
atleast 5 minutes imitating Green Catbirds, Whipbirds, Yellow-tailed
Black-cockatoos, Grey Butcherbird, Eastern Rosellas etc).
SOLDIERS PT (NEAR TOUKLEY) -Black-browed Albatross (1),
thousands of Short-tailed and Wedge-tailed Shearwaters, hundreds of
Fluttering and Hutton’s Shearwaters and a single Buller’s
Shearwater; lots of waders on the rocks including Pacific Golden
Plovers, Red-necked Stints, Curlew Sandpipers, Whimbrel,
Grey-tailed Tattlers, Ruddy Turnstones and a Sooty
Oystercatcher and lots of Terns including 200 plus Common Terns and a
few Little Terns (both resident and migratory birds).
Here, I also saw 2 Humpback Whales heading north when in theory they should
be heading south.
About 130 species were seen/heard for most of the day here in the central
coast.
Edwin
