bird blitz/flower blitz- Weetangera, Gossan, Calvary, BM [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]

["Whitworth, Benjamin - BRS" <>]

This is just a quick note. I did the bird blitz today.

Weetangera:

My house- pair of sparrows carrying food (CF) Yay!

School: It’s funny, I was looking for ages up in a tree at a peewee, trying to work out if there were two, then all of a sudden I saw a Kookaburra and a Black faced cuckoo shrike flew in, replaced it’s partner on a nest. Magpie with dependent young (DY). 2 Swallows probably-on nest but couldn’t find nest. Ironbarks are in flower.

Then I visited Gossan Hill, around Calvary and Black Mountain. I raved about the flowers at Bruce ridge, last month, but the above areas are now totally covered in flowering plants, the best display I have ever seen in Canberra in my life. See below.

Gossan Hill: Oriole, BFCS, 3 bronzewings, RW with DY

Calvary- west: Dollarbird CF, SC cockatoo- on, butcherbird,

Calvary- South: oriole, friarbird, 8 striated thornbills, > 8 scrubwrens, heaps of fantails, redbrows

Black Mountain- corner of Belco way and GDE- A path on a ridge which runs parallel to Belco way: 2 sacred kingfishers acting very suspicious- probably have a nest, leaden flycatchers-on nest the pair swapped a number of times, painted button quail flushed and plenty of platelets, BFCS, treecreepers, crimsons-on, 1 kookaburra

Black Mountain- Link path/near sign: Gang gang- on nest, many crimson rosellas on nests or inspecting hollows (ih), 2 orioles, another pair of leaden flycatchers-on, galahs ih, 3 sacred kingfishers- a pair had a territorial fight with another bird from the South, grey currawong, 2 brown- headed honeyeaters, swamp wallaby

Flowers: The above sites all had basically the same flowers, except Calvary west which had large stands of Bulbine lilies. Off the top of my head, The dominant flowers are egg and bacon- Daviesia mimisoides, Pultenea, Dillwynia, also white Daphne Heath- Brachyloma daphnoides, . Interspersed between shrubs are orchids, sun orchids- Thelymitra both the big and lots of small ones, Donkey orchids, finger orchids, pink trigger plants, lots of purple twining fringe lilies, flax lilies Dianella, Wahlenbergia, white Leptospermum multicaulie, and lots of Lomandra species, surprisingly quite a few yam daisies in all sites which is strange as it’s late and they are in forests. And on Black Mountain also Gevillea alpina, penny stinkwort. Just so many flowers, I will have to check the spelling and write the flower lists up for Field Nats. It is such a spectacular year, get out there with your cameras so we can impress people with Canberra’s nature and hopefully get some published in the newspapers.

Benj Whitworth

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