Wednesday Walk to Hall Woodlands

[Martin Butterfield <>]

The editors of Gang-gang may wish to use what follows as the report on this outing.

30 members and guests arrived beside the Barton Highway and were soon at work recording a number of species before the 8:30 kick-off time.  An early highlight was a White-necked heron beside the dam just inside the gate.  

 

There were a number of dominant sounds of the day including the calls of Rufous Songlarks (we estimated at least 4 birds were present) and the chirps of the many Woodswallows (mainly White-browed but quite a few Dusky and eventually two Masked).  The calls of Sacred Kingfisher(s) were more or less constant.

 

The most interesting feature of the visit was finding many breeding species.  Of these the most exciting were two very young Brown Treecreepers emerging form a hollow spout and on at least flying off.  We were quite sure this was their fledging flight. At least two White-browed Woodswallows (and one Dusky) were nesting.  Nests of Black-faced Cuckoo-shrike, White-plumed Honeyeater and Noisy Friarbird were all in the process of construction. 

 

At this site we recorded 43 species with 10 of them undertaking one or more forms of breeding activity (the over-achiever in the latter regard being Willie Wagtail with DY as well as copulation (CO) in a nest (ON).

 

We then went briefly to Hall Cemetery where a female Mistletoebird greeted us at the gate (and only just above head height) adding to the trip list.  11 species were recorded in this visit, also adding Noisy Miner to the trip list.  Three additional breeding records were obtained including a Dollarbird which disappeared into a hole in a Eucalypt.

The editors of Gang-gang may wish to add the following to the Forthcoming trips section.

For December the Wednesday Walk will be to the Tuggeranong Pines area near (but not too near) the Paintball area beside the Monaro Highway.  We'll meet at 8:30am on 18 December.  Details of parking etc will be circulated via email closer to the time.  If there is a Total Fire Ban the walk will be cancelled.

A list of birds seen today is attached and some images and wit (?) are on my blog.

--
Martin Butterfield

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

131120 COG Hall.xlsx
Description: MS-Excel 2007 spreadsheet

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