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Three for three - The Hunter Big Year final wrap

To: Birding Aus <>
Subject: Three for three - The Hunter Big Year final wrap
From: Mick Roderick <>
Date: Wed, 5 Jan 2011 01:04:24 -0800 (PST)
Three for Three - The Hunter Big Year final wrap
 
Midnight on the 31st December in Crowdy Bay National Park and there endethed 
the 
‘Hunter Big Year’, which I’m going to dub posthumously “Huby”. As I toasted a 
glass of Hunter Semillon with my non-birding compatriots I convinced myself 
that 
it was also a ‘good year’. Of course, it was a good year and any year you see 
343 species within 200km, by the Torresian Crow, of your front door has to be 
viewed as such! The more I think about this, the more impressed I become with 
the feat – it is a great place to live really. 

 
My last report had me on 336 species and about to embark on a 5-day sojourn 
around the region with a pair of Canadian birders. This started very well when 
we lucked onto another bird that I thought I was not going to see. Scanning 
Grahamstown Dam to show them Musk Ducks I picked up 3 Whiskered Terns perched 
on 
a buoy a couple of hundred metres from the shore. This was a new bird for the 
Canadian folk, but I reckon I was more excited to see them! 

 
The next bird to fall was one of those ‘relief’ birds that I really should have 
bagged much earlier on. Already I’d seen Russet-tailed Thrushes at Barrington 
House but this is one of a number of sites in the Hunter where both thrushes 
occur. I did hear both species calling in the dawn chorus on the morning we 
were 
there and as luck would not normally have had it, Bassian was the first we saw, 
after carefully scrutinising the bird in question. I was to see many more 
Bassians from then on. 

 
I had a small glimmer of hope that we may have come across a ‘returning’ 
(lost?) 
White-winged Triller whilst out west, but this wasn’t to be. In fact, we were 
lucky to see any birds out there at all, having been flooded out of numerous 
sites and almost stranded by raging rivers and creeks three times. Rain – the 
overarching theme of 2010 without doubt.  
 
On the 8th December, at the HBOC meeting I suggested to Dan that we try for 
Boobook after the show, as I was getting very nervous about missing this bird. 
I 
was particularly ‘edgey’ about it as we’d heard it at close-quarters whilst 
camping near Cassilis in January and made a conscious decision to “leave it for 
later on”. Although the decision to avoid eye-balling a Spotted Pardalote for 
as 
long as possible was easily rectifiable, I started to think that choosing not 
to 
bag a nocturnal bird could have been a bit foolhardy. So we went to Dan’s 
Boobook site in suburban Blackbutt Reserve and soon after cupping my hands and 
doing my best ‘morepork’ imitations we had a bird calling, which we located 
easily. 

 
It was to be nearly another fortnight before I added another bird. This wasn’t 
through a lack of trying as I’d been checking the Newcastle Baths daily and ran 
a pelagic on Sunday 12th. The latter was easily the quietest pelagic I’d ever 
been on, with not a single bird coming in to the boat whilst at the shelf. I’d 
also followed a promising lead regarding Skylarks on Ash Island but which 
frustratingly got me nothing but dozens of Pipits, leaving me with an entire 
year of adding birds with not a single species to thank Ash Island for. I did 
see one bird there first, a crippling European Goldfinch, but which I saw 
several times later at other sites. So much for the vagrant capital of the 
Hunter! 

 
Hunter birders are eagerly waiting to see me off on travels again, as that 
seems 
to be the only time that terrestrial vagrants arrive in our region. And to make 
‘vagrant matters’ worse I started receiving news around mid December from 
Christmas / Cocos where I was supposed be leading the group that Richard Baxter 
was guiding (as he was originally going to be travelling to and from Heard 
Island at that time). 
 
The bird added on the 21st though, was a corker and one of my favourite birds 
for the year. In the midst of a (nervous) few days with the family in the Blue 
Mountains, Steve showed me an image of a bird on the back of his wife’s iPhone. 
It was of an immature White-browed Woodswallow, taken by her photographer 
brother with an enquiry about what the bird was. I asked where the photo had 
been taken.
 
“The wetlands centre”he said, “…apparently there are a few of them”.
 
I resisted the temptation to desert the family Christmas and decided to 
investigate on Monday arvo – this was a bird I had not expected at all and the 
prospect was very exciting indeed. I arrived with a very loose description of 
where the birds had been seen at 3:50pm (the website says they’re open til 
5pm), 
only to be told they closed at 4pm and that I had 10 minutes. This was just 
enough to get me to the roughly described location, but alas there were no 
Woodswallows. I ran back to the gate and decided to look again in the morning 
in 
a location I considered more likely. 

 
The next day I headed straight for the spot that if I was a White-browed 
Woodswallow, I’d be hanging out and within seconds of arriving there I heard 
the 
unmistakeable “chyep” from a bird in flight. I looked up and watched an 
immature 
male fly to a perch on a dead wattle tree, which was soon joined by a second 
bird. I spent as much time with these birds as I could, as they have always 
been 
amongst my favourite birds and to land a species that I’d all but written-off 
it 
was a gleeful moment. “One-back on the deserters” I thought to myself. Indeed 
these were the only White-broweds reported east of the divide (east of 
Cobar?!?) 
in NSW in 2010. 

 
The Woodswallow represented something of a landmark, as the 340th bird for the 
year. I had to get to Gloucester Tops to try for the two species I needed up 
there. I gauged the situation on the home front and decided that a Christmas 
Eve 
mission was the best option, as I didn’t want to 'push things' between 
Christmas 
and New Years. I must digress here. Unlike Sean Dooley was in 2002, I am not 
single…and unlike Paul and Ruth, my partner is not a birder (I often wonder 
what 
that would be like!). I have no idea how Tim Dolby managed to do his VicTwitch 
with a family. 

 
I figured that as Gloucester Tops was my final “site”, I needed to get it out 
of 
the way before the post-Xmas break, leaving that time to keep checking the 
baths 
and my ear out for a vagrant to turn up. Emerald Dove was pretty much one of 
only two resident birds I could still target after the “Tops Two” so I decided 
to roll a visit to Copeland Tops into Chrissy Eve as well.
 
Leaving home at 4am in drizzling rain, I went straight to a Rufous Scrub-bird 
that “I knew” and sure enough he was singing his heart out when I arrived, 
audible to me before I’d even turned the car engine off. I took up position on 
a 
nearby log and waited patiently. Within a few minutes he popped up and showed 
himself briefly from the end of a perpendicular log, bringing a grin from ear 
to 
ear to my face. Seeing an RSB was a massive relief and I wasted no time heading 
off to look for Olive Whistlers, with the theory being I would give myself more 
time to target the dove at Copeland.
 
Unfortunately, the whistler took a lot longer than I had anticipated, with a 
complete failure at the site I’d counted on producing for me. This was a fairly 
long walk in and out and cost me a lot of time and dry clothes. Typically, I 
got 
onto 3 birds along the roadside on the way back out. I wasn’t that miffed, as I 
was just very happy to have bagged the bird! I’d made 3 attempts to get to 
Gloucester Tops since Dan and I went up in late Jan. The first was thwarted by 
a 
dead car battery, the second by flooded creek-crossings, but now it was a case 
of 3rd time lucky. 

 
I just had time to try Copeland Tops for Emerald Dove but I had to nearly run 
the 2km up the steep hill to where Al Richardson had seen one walking along the 
track just a week earlier. It was to be yet another dip and made the Emerald 
Dove the biggest “grip-bird” for the Huby. Although there are species that I’m 
more disappointed in that I did not end up seeing (White-winged Triller 
foremost), Emerald Dove was the only bird actually reported in the region more 
than twice that I never saw. 

 
Still, I now felt like I’d made a significant achievement, Emerald Dove or no 
Emerald Dove – I’d seen 342 species within the confines of the Hunter Region in 
a calendar year. Anything from now on would very much be a bonus. To increase 
my 
chances at the bonus, I made daily checks at the baths in the hope that a Grey 
Ternlet or Black Noddy had flown in (both had been seen recently in or near 
Sydney). 

 
I also started to think about how to end the year with a possible addition.
 
There were limited options really, but I was able to impress my partner Magi 
and 
New Years celebrants, Gumage and Ang, with a trip to the north. This was my 
only 
option really, as it meant having one last crack at a Grass Owl, a stab at that 
infernal Emerald Dove at Harrington and put me in the ballpark for something 
‘special’ - a Fruit-Dove in the rainforest, a nice wader maybe? Thanks to my 
fountain of good oil, Al Richardson, who was birding with his family at Old 
Bar, 
the decision paid off. Some of you will know Old Bar as the place where the 
Kentish Plover turned up in 2002…I was in Bolivia at the time.
 
Al had already informed me that the traditional Grass Owl site had been gated 
off and that the White-eared Monarch was still absent from Figtree where it was 
last seen in 2008 – not a good start. On the morning of the 30th, he texted me 
“Grey plover mudbishops” – not a vagrant but certainly uncommon and even more 
certainly missing from my year list! Al was going back to the site the next day 
and the timing was great – we could actually arrive there when he would be 
there, so the oil would be crisp fresh. 

 
Next day I picked Gumage up from work at midday and we headed north, making 
good 
progress through the holiday traffic, until someone mentioned “chips”, which 
was 
simultaneous with a text from Al reading “Grey plover same spot as yesterday”. 
We stopped at Bulahdelah to quickly grab some hot chips, only to be made wait 
40 
minutes for them to arrive! At the 39th minute Gumage got impatient and decided 
to go for a dip in the river. Then as Magi walked out of the take-away with the 
tucker, Gumage emerged from the river with blood streaming from his right foot, 
having sliced it open on a rock getting out of the water. So, with the 
patiently-waited-for chips (which I refused to eat) finished, we had to wait to 
nurse Gumage’s foot back to relative health before setting off again. I was 
beside myself – the tide was rising and kite surfers were arriving at the spot 
where the plover was. And the ‘oil baron’ was about to leave the site. 

 
As it turned out Al and his family were just packing up when we arrived at the 
site. He had time though to take me across the channels and islands and sand 
bars to show me where the bird had last been seen. There were fishermen and 
kite 
surfers everywhere and there were Golden Plovers scattered all over as well. 

 
“Lest-a-buck”he said, as he left me on my hunt, with 3 non-birders waiting for 
me back at the car.
 
It did take about 20 long minutes, but I tracked the Grey Plover down on a 
small 
sand island to the west of where Al had left me. To confirm the ID I needed to 
get reasonably close and I was standing in waist-deep water when I clinched it. 
Being half-submerged made it difficult to jump around with excitement, but I 
did 
my best, emulating a water aerobic instructor and providing some entertainment 
to the kite surfers. What a great bird to add with less than 9 hours left in 
the 
year.
 
En-route to our camp I did manage a 5 minute stroll into the Harrington 
Rainforest in a vain attempt to see an unmentionable dove that had been heard 
there a week earlier. But the last real throw of the dice was made just after 
dark when I tried a new site in some heathland for a last ditch effort at Grass 
Owl. Although I’d been ‘in the zone’ for Emerald Dove on several occasions, the 
Grass Owl was the subject of seven targeted attempts at past and current known 
sites, thus making it the bird I’d spent the most time on for nil return. 

 
This last ditch effort simply added to the time spent for nil return.
 
So we trudged back to camp and discounting a King Quail stumbling into camp 
before midnight or a Brolga falling out the sky, it was all over. I cracked the 
Sem and enjoyed the goings-on in the campground without any concern about what 
new bird I needed to look for. 

 
343 species is a very respectable total and a good benchmark to set. But I’m a 
listing birder, and invariably listing birders like to reflect and mull over 
the 
“coulda-beens”. I know that it could’ve been such a greater year had I timed it 
better…i.e. not done it in 2010! As it turned out, the timing of the year alone 
(it was the 3rd wettest year on record in Australia) directly cost me 6 or 7 
species…but then again any other year may not have been as successful for other 
birds. If only that rain started just 5 days later…sigh…
 
Still, when Dan and I sat in the Northern Star Hotel in Hamilton in November 
2009 to plot out the Huby and what would be achievable we never imagined I 
would 
have reached 343. In fact we’d decided that 330 would be nigh-impossible, so 
why 
not make the target a nice, mathematically aesthetic number like ‘333’? I’m 
also 
really happy to have reached 300 species from the catchment of the Hunter River 
too. This feat is far more significant from a biogeographical perspective. 

 
Thanks to the many people who provided ‘good oil’ during the year – you know 
who 
you are. Thanks also to my partner-in-crime Dan Williams who wasn’t able to be 
as committed as I was. 

 
Here's to Huby.
 
Mick Roderick
---
p.s. - I have a Word document with a chronological list of birds seen (where 
and 
when) + some more stats than the 'vital' ones below. If anyone would like a 
copy 
just email me.
 
Some vital stats…
·         Total number of bird species seen = 343 
·         Number of species seen, excluding pelagics = 324 
·         Number of species seen in or from the catchment of the Hunter River = 
302 

·         Number of species seen only within 10 metres of the boundary of the 
Hunter Region = 4 (Cockatiel, Inland Thornbill, Little Friarbird, Plum-headed 
Finch) 

·         Number of species seen in 2009 but not in 2010 = 12 
·         Number of threatened species seen (NSW TSC Act 1995) = 52 
·         Average total number of species recorded in the Hunter Region in the 
five years 2005-2009 = 347.2 

·         Time taken to get...
First 100 species = < 5 days.
First 200 species = 22 days 
First 300 species = 108 days
Last 43 species = 257 days
Last 30 species = 174 days
Species seen at ‘half way’ mark (June 30th) = 312 
·         Longest gap without a new bird seen = 37 days; 5th August (Swift 
Parrot) to 11th September (Rock Warbler)
·         Best bird = New Zealand Storm-petrel. 
·         Worst dip (i.e. hurts the most) = White-winged Triller.



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