out of area - of interest to the Easter campers and possibly others ...

[sandra henderson <>]

Below is an extract from Phil Maher's blog today. The COG Easter campers visited this reveg plot - we saw 3 Pied honeyeaters there!  If anyone's planning a trip down that way I can give you info on the location of this little revegetated plot.

Sandra H

11 April 2018, Wednesday

Astonished by the large flock of sixty to eighty pied honeyeaters at the Monimail revegetation plot on Sunday evening, today I went out before dawn to see what they were up to in the early morning. Vastly greater numbers than Sunday’s sighting emerged from the thick shrubs. There were two to three hundred pied honeyeaters wheeling around overhead before flying in four big flocks northeast towards the blackbox country. Only a dozen or so stayed to feed in the revegation area. With no rain since January, it’s very dry and food is not abundant. The main food available to them would appear to be berries of ruby and thorny saltbushes but maybe they are finding something else.

 

These pied honeyeater numbers are unprecedented in this district. The unusually large influx has been brought about by the severe drought in western NSW and southwestern Queensland forcing them south and they are now seemingly, marooned in the Riverina until it rains in the north.  They will probably be all right until it turns cold, at which time they will suffer. Hopefully it will rain before that occurs. This is the latest I have ever seen pied honeyeaters in the district. In previous irruptions, they have usually departed the district by February/ March.