The drought has been bringing a lot of birds to the Eastern suburbs
of Sydney that are rarely seen here. A lot of them are relatively
common at the moment around the Hawkesbury, but on Saturday for the
first time I clocked over a hundred species (actually 101), which is
fairly hard, as there is only a little bit of remnant woodland, and
no forest. The good areas are almost all in Randwick and Botany LGAs.
The posh suburbs around the harbour are pretty useless for birds.
Centennial Park and Maroubra in Randwick, and Eastlakes Golf Course,
Mill and Engine Ponds and Penrhyn Road in Botany the best spots. All
of these wetlands have a lot of exposed mud right now. Botany Bay NP
was closed, but would not probably have added anything to what was
seen at Maroubra. What is usually a good little swamp at Bundock
Street has dried out completely.
The best records were probably the complete Sydney set of eight
galliforms on Saturday: Eastlakes golf course had Coot, Dusky Moorhen
and Purple Swamphen, as well as Australian Spotted, Baillon's and
Spotless Crakes, whilst Maroubra had the two rails. Actually I only
heard Lewin's. Dave Mitford and I then heard Lewin's at Eastlakes on
Sunday, and there's a good chance that Buff-banded Rails are lurking
around there too, so all eight could probably be seen at Eastlakes
right now.
Other good birds included four egrets, which is very unusual out this
way, with Intermediate being a first for the area for a long time. A
good selection of waders, nothing very unusual on a regional scale,
but thirteen species did include a Common Sandpiper at Eastlakes on
Friday and Saturday, where Dave Mitford also found a Red-kneed
Dotterel - another very scarce bird out here. There were over a
hundred Sharpies and over thirty Latham's Snipe at Eastlakes, and
about seventy Red-necked Stints, twenty-five Curlew Sands, just under
a hundred Bar-tailed Godwits, three Red Knot, a couple of Turnstones
and a couple of Red-capped Plovers at Penrhyn Road. One of the twelve
Common Terns there had an orange band on the left leg, and there were
also a dozen Little Terns. Engine Pond, meanwhile, had most of the
Whiskered Terns, with forty-four in the full variety of plumages (as
well as the Intermediate Egret, Cattle and Little Egret). Crested
Tern proved to be the hardest to nail of the four terns seen on
Saturday. They are scarce even on the coast.
Dave has recorded up to nine White-winged Trillers at Eastlakes, and
they look very territorial and may be breeding around the pine trees,
which may be the only place in the world where Greenfinch and
White-winged Triller are nesting next to each other. He also found a
Pallid Cuckoo there, another very scarce bird this far east.
Cheers,
Rod Gardner
--
Dr Rod Gardner
Senior Lecturer
Department of Linguistics
School of Modern Language Studies
University of New South Wales
NSW 2052
Australia
Tel: ±61 2 9385 1454
Fax: ±61 2 9385 1190
CRICOS Provider Code 00098G
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