A Breeding good morning at Campbell Park

[martin butterfield <>]

The editors of Gang-gang may wish to use what follows as a trip report.

24 members and guests rolled into the Campbell Park area for a morning's exploration.  Knowing the history of the area as an excellent birding spot, during the drought years I had grown frustrated with the lack of birds.  This morning has revitalised my view of the area as we recorded 34 species with 13 of them presenting some form of breeding activity.

Of the species not recorded breeding it is likely that the Nankeen Kestrel seen a couple of times was the male of the pair nesting in the Defence Dept Offices.  The other raptor passing by - a Peregrine Falcon - is not known (to me) to be nesting in the area.  Other interesting occurrence records were a flypast by a White-necked Heron and a very prolonged pose by a Dollarbird.

In the order I recorded them the breeding records were: Australian Magpie (DY); White-throated Gerygone (NB); Crimson Rosella (IH); Black-faced Cuckoo-shrike (NB); Rufous Whistler (NY);

Weebill (NB); White-winged Triller (NY), Eastern Rosella (IH); Magpie-lark (ON); Red-rumped Parrot (IH); Long-billed Corella (IH); Brown-headed Honeyeater (DY); and Varied Sitella (DY).

Thanks to all those attending as many eyes made nest spotting easier!  Thanks to Jack Holland and Anthony Overs also since their workshop 10 days earlier had already done the hard yards for some of the nests.  I will put a selection of my photographs of the birds (and a few of the flowers) on my blog.  A species list will be included on the Trips page of the COG website in due course.

For the Future Outings element of Gang-gang:

The December outing will be on 19 December and will go to the Australian Institute of Sport in Bruce.  Details of the meeting point will be advised by email to the chatline nearer to the date.

--
Martin Butterfield

http://franmart.blogspot.com.au/