Michael Todd asked whether it is true that Eastern Whipbird and Superb Lyrebird
are absent from the Otway Range in southern western Victoria. The answer is
yes, along with some other wet forest birds as listed by Peter Fuller. Similar
gaps appear in the mammal fauna - no Greater Glider or Mountain Brushtail
Possum, no Brush-tailed Phascogale [not really a wet forest species but
curiously absent] and no Common Wombat although this species used to occur on
the Otway Plain to the north of the range and has inexplicably never been
recorded in the Otway Range proper, even though the habitat would seem ideal.
The usual explanation is that the savannah grasslands of the Victorian Volcanic
Plain were a barrier to movement of these missing species [except the Wombat].
The Volcanic Plain extends to the sea in the Werribee-Avalon region and on the
Bellarine Peninsula preventing forest-dependent species with little dispersal
capability from crossing.
Thus the Otway Range, and Wilsons Promontory for that matter, have bird and
mammal faunas that can be considered intermediate between those of the forests
of eastern Victoria and Tasmania.
Peter Menkhorst
==============================www.birding-aus.org
birding-aus.blogspot.com
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