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After hardly seeing or hearing a Satin Bowerbird
for the past 6-8 months, at about 17:35 this afternoon a loose flock of over 20
green birds rested briefly in a tall blue gum in a neighbour's place
before heading off in a ENE direction over Rivett towards Woden, flying
clearly above the tree tops.
This was very similar behaviour, and in a very
similar direction, to the morning dispersal flights from the roost in
Chauvel Circle I saw many times pre-fires, except at the opposite end of the
day. Back then, even though the roost was close by and contained up to 80
birds, I always had great difficulty in finding any number of birds coming in to
roost, in spite of a number of attempts of watching very closely.
The birds were clearly on their way to a roost site
well inside the suburbs, opposite to my previous theory that they preferred the
edges of Canberra such as Duffy and Kambah. The only suspected roost
site close to the City Centre that suspect is in the Royal
Canberra Golf Course around Warrina Inlet, but again this has been hard to
confirm, and obviously too far away for these birds to be heading
to.
Has anyone else seen such a roost flight, or know
of an inner suburban roost?
Jack Holland
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