ANBG today

[Con Boekel <>]

Hi Steve

This morning we walked from the Black Mountain entrance to the main entrance and neither saw nor heard a Red Wattlebird. Birds generally were scarce. I assume that many ANBG birds would have been killed by the hail stones. But I am not sure about that.

The trees at higher elevations inside the gardens appear to be responding to having their leaves stripped off by the hail by sending out epicormic shoots.

regards

Con

On 2/16/2020 5:09 PM, Steve Read wrote:

I wandered through the Australian National Botanic Gardens this morning – full bird-list at ebird.org/australia/checklist/S64550995. Small birds (White-browed Scrub-wren &c) were active, but unusually I saw no Red Wattlebirds and only heard a brief call from one. On previous visits of similar length over the last 12 months I have seen or heard 15, 6, 15, 22, 10, 6. 3, 7, 8, 5 and 12.

 

Have others noticed a marked exodus of Red Wattlebirds from particular areas this summer, or a relative paucity of Red Wattlebirds from the ANBG currently?

 

The gardens looked better than expected after the hailstorm. I suspect a major clean-up was undertaken. Many of the eucalypt stands had lost much of their canopy, but regeneration had already started. A few trunks in the upper parts of the gardens showed scars from individual hailstones, but this phenomenon was not as marked as higher up Black Mountain.

 

Regards

 

Steve