It's officially the first day of winter which means that autumn has
finished for another year, so I thought I'd look back over this
season's honeyeater migration here in the Blue Mountains, NSW.
As many of you know, where I live in Katoomba I regularly get huge
numbers of Yellow-faced and White-naped Honeyeaters travelling
through from mid-March to late May. Well this year autumn sped past
before I knew it, and leaving me still waiting for the masses of
migrating honeyeaters. Numbers were much lower than usual. The first
flocks didn't appear until 31st March, and the only day that I was
actually inspired enough to count them was on 6th May when they
reached about 1800 per hour during the late morning. On most other
mornings they were just trickling through in comparison with previous
years.
Silvereye numbers also seemed to be down. I did hear them migrating
before dawn as they often do, on 5th May when I was out early to
watch the lunar eclipse.
Did they take a different route this year, or were overall numbers
lower due to the drought (or was it a combination of these factors)?
One interesting thing this season was the occasional Crescent
Honeyeater travelling amongst the migrating flocks. I've never
noticed them doing this in previous years.
With Red Wattlebirds it was a different story. During the latter part
of May I started to see frequent flocks of them moving through. There
are always a few travelling north in autumn, but this year they
seemed to be migrating in larger numbers than I have ever seen
before. They were still moving through yesterday morning, together
with a few late flocks of White-naped Honeyeaters.
Cheers
Carol
Carol Probets
Katoomba, Blue Mountains NSW
100km west of Sydney
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