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"Yes, if you call me at 0500 tomorrow, we can go birding at Campbell Park
by 6 o'clock," I said in response to an overture at dinner last Friday evening,
thinking that would be the last I'd hear of it. But no.
0450 hours Saturday, a petite twit entered my sleeping quarters and beat a
mega-decibel reveille on the base of an empty biscuit tin. "Surprise! Surprise!
Wakie, wakie, shine and rise!" she hollered. I reached down for a boot to
chuck but the perpetrator scarpered.
Campbell Park proved bountiful by dawn's early light. Ten White-winged
Choughs with 4 begging young in tow. Pallid Cuckoo. 'bout 7 Brown-headed
Honeyeaters. An apparent crèche of screechy young Galahs, probably 'bout
20. Three King parrots. A lone Musk Lorikeet in a Yellow Box tree, it
wasn't feeding or calling, just sitting still although it changed perches three
times during the 5 minutes we watched before flying off towards Mt Ainslie.
A Restless Flycatcher hovering and grinding its scissors. Black-faced Cuckoo
Shrike on minuscule nest.
Near the horse bars, a White-throated Treecreeper working up a tree.
"Augurs well for Brown Treecreepers that used to be hereabouts," a junior
authority on such matters ventured. Then, bless my binos, 5 minutes later, on a
dead windfall, we saw a single Brown Treecreeper. Junior Audubon was extremely
choughed ... I mean chuffed.
Three Speckled Warblers ground feeding accompanied by Yellow and
Buff-rumped Thornbills. A Leaden Flycatcher feeding 2 fledglings. Three Southern
Whitefaces, 2 Common Bronzewings and a few very vociferous Grey
Shrike-thrush.
A cacophony of Sulphur-crested Cockatoos began hurrying hither and
thither as Pied Currawongs sounded the war tocsins. "Raptor alert! Check the
skies," I advised. And so it came to pass, Papa Audubon was right, and we
watched a Wedge-tail Eagle fly over on high.
A Rock Dove flapped by, about four metres above the deck. It seemed to
be having engine trouble. Then its navigational equipment failed as it collided
slap-bang with the foliage of a Blakely's Redgum, making no discernible attempt
to execute a proper landing. It tumbled down and squatted on the ground looking
very much under the weather. As we approached, it staggered into the air
and weaved away, scarcely clearing the top of a fence. Then it appeared to
buy the farm as it dove (well, it was a dove) headlong into the grass. We
wondered what local building managers were spiking the pigeon bait with of
late.
A fox trotted down the track and didn't notice us until it was 20
metres away. It fled, ran up a fence stay, jumped off the strainer post and
disappeared into the undergrowth. "Foxes have very poor eyesight and that one
was careless 'cause it approached with the breeze coming from behind so it never
saw or scented us until late," a brat, who claims some expertise in the
field of foxes, explained. She recently read Memoirs of a Fox Hunting
Man by Siegfried Sassoon. Loved all the horse talk but not so the parts
where the hounds caught Reynard, tore him asunder and left him strewn about like
a bowl of spilt raspberry yogurt.
John K. Layton
PS. Noon today seven Superb Parrots flew across the extreme north-western
sector of Holt heading south-west.
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