|
Hi Birders,
While the birdlist for the Blue
Mountains (NSW) might include the out of range White-eared Monarch on the basis
of a specimen collected possibly at Lithgow in 1889, the record was
reviewed by Hindwood & Lane (The Emu 70,
200) who considered that that it was an unusual occurrence, "difficult to
explain". This is because it is a fairly uncommon bird of the NSW Sub-tropical
Coastal and Littoral Rainforests, normally occurring as far south as Iluka, in
the Northern Rivers Region of NSW and that is far cry really from a "wet scrubby
gully in one of the gorges of the Blue Mountains".
The article goes on to point our that
the curator of the Australian Museum collection in 1890 Dr E.P. Ramsay, had not
seen the bird in NSW, nor up to 1970 had Keith Hindwood or Bill Lane, both who
had travelled extensively in NSW up to that point. The latter would have
subsequently seen it at Woolgoolga and Iluka. Whether the origin of the bird was
"Blue Mountains" is not conclusive although the original label on the bird says
"R.Grant, Lithgow", The collector Robert Grant, came from Lithgow but did he
collect the specimen there?.
At least the Crowdy Head bird is
associated with coastal littoral rainforest.
Alan Morris
Records Officer, Birding
NSW.
|
