Hi Jack
I was down near Williamsdale this morning, and even though I thought the weather wasn’t perfect for migration there was a small number of migrating Y-f honeyeaters – about 150 in a 20 minute period around 10am.
Only a couple of White-napes.
We won’t know if it is over until the end of April, but it wouldn’t surprise me if we only see dribs and drabs for the next couple of weeks. Given the utter devastation in ne Vic, northern Kosi and Namadgi, there
is very little mountain forest for the birds to come from, just the northern Brindabellas, and maybe the southern part of Kosi (if those birds even come this way). Even more sobering is wondering where they are going to overwinter. With the vast extent of
burnt coastal forest, how many are going to be in the return migration in September?
Nicki
From: [
Sent: Tuesday, 7 April, 2020 4:48 PM
To: 'COG Chat'
Subject: [canberrabirds] Is the Yellow-faced Honeyeater Migration season over already?
Given the best (though not perfect) migrating conditions for a number of days, Andrea and I went to Narrabundah Hill, walking N fence line and a third of way down the W fence. No Yellow-faced Honeyeaters (YFHE) were seen from 10:34 to
11:03 am including a 10 minute stop from 10:53 under the known migration route where on the COG outing last year on 8 April we saw several thousand come through around the same time of day.
So is the YFHE migration over for this year?
Lindsay Hansch, who lives under arguably the major migration route in Jerrabomberra thinks it may possibly be. He thought that today would have been a perfect day for the YFHE but not a single bird has passed by. No birds were sighted
on Sunday and yesterday only one flock passed over at about 2 pm.
Has anyone seen any signs of their migration over the past couple of days?
Very interesting is that of the flocks that have gone through so far there have been very few White-naped Honeyeaters. Lindsay looked at photos of passing flocks last Wednesday and scanned through them carefully and did not find one White-naped.
Please keep a look out for both species migrating from now on – we could be witnessing a major effect of the fires to the SW?
Jack Holland
