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We arrived at Frith Road (rear of ANBG) at 7:30am yesterday for a bird walk
in the Black Mountain Nature Reserve. Soon as we got out of the ute we saw three
Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoos rowing along overhead, then four
Gang-Gang Cockatoos creaked down from up the mountain
and descended into the gardens.
Throughout one-and-three-quarter hours we saw 33 species.
Further highlights: 3 Scarlet Robins, two more
Gang-gang Cockatoos, two Tawny
Frogmouths perched on a dead branch. After the brats got
over their initial fascination they started, "Is it frogmouths or frogmice? [!]
And they are not tawny, they're grey so are they a sub-species or a morph? And I
know a girl who thinks Owlet Nightjars are baby frogmouths, what do you think of
that? Does a frogmouth take frogs? Does ..." "Pipe down!" I growled kindly,
"and look at HANZAB when we get home." I'll never take them birding again, they
drive a poor bloke nuts.
Four Speckled Warblers feeding with seven
Yellow-rumped Thornbills, three Buff-rumped Thornbills
and two White-browed Scrub Wrens. A seemingly
large party of 17 White-winged Choughs. A pair of quail
scrambled out of a patch of dead fall and zoomed away keeping low (~
1.5m) to the ground. We bet they were Painted Button
Quail but have never seen the species in the ACT except on Mt
Ainslie/Mt Majura. Three male Golden Whistlers and, at various
places, six Rufous Whistlers, all males. A
lost-looking Diamond Dove. Seven King
Parrots. Grey Fantails seemed ubiquitous, saw about
ten and, back at the car park, a "ballerina bird" i.e. a Rufous Fantail
pirouetted within a metre of the bitumen. We saw twelve
White-naped Honeyeaters foliage-foraging together with three
White-eared Honeyeaters and a few White-plumed
Honeyeaters but no Yellow-faced Honeyeaters.
During our walk we saw numerous Meadow Argus Butterflies
passing through the area. We understand they're a widely spread species but
wonder if they're migratory to some extent.
Crested Pigeons are now an avian fixture in Canberra, but during the past
two weeks local numbers seem to have increased markedly. It's not unusual to see
groups of 30-plus perched on power cables out back of the house. Then, at
4:30pm today, I counted 52 on the cables and there were about another 20 sitting
on neighbouring roofs.
John Layton
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