After Con & Julian's reports from Googong last week I headed out on
Saturday afternoon.
I arrived at the London Bridge car park at around 2.30pm. That only gave me
2 and a half hours before the gates closed.
I made it as far as Gelignite Crossing (~4km), which is a beautiful steep
gorge which the river runs through. A great spot in the late afternoon
sunshine. I stopped at every gully on the way listening for heathwrens. At
the spot where Julian had possibly heard heathwrens it was deadly quiet.
Even at Gelignite Crossing there was hardly a bird to be heard. I did,
however, find the Brown Treecreepers reported in the same location along
the track.
But the best spot was a gully closest to Drawdown Crossing along the track.
Here in a large area of forest with tea-tree understorey I found Eastern
Yellow Robins, an Echidna and various other birds. I also heard an unusual
and unfamiliar call being made by 2 separate birds hidden in the scrub.
The calls were I believe the same that Julian had heard in a gully some 0.5
kms further along the track - with an insect-like quality. A repeated
'tzit-id' (x6-12) which was sometimes answered by another bird. At no time
could I squeak them into view. A pair of scrubwrens were also very active
here but were not in the area where the calls were coming from. I am pretty
familiar with most of the Scrubwren and Brown Thornbill calls but hadn't
heard this call before. It is possible that they were heathwrens but I
couldn't say for sure. It wasn't a heathwren call that I had heard before
and I could find no mention of it in any of my guides.
This gully which empties out on to Burra Creek is only some ~500 m from the
London Bridge arch itself walking along the track. On the walk back a prime
example of a wombat graced me with his presence at Drawdown Crossing.
Cheers
Marnix Zwankhuizen
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