There were lots of Yellow-faced HEs migrating over Bulldock Paddock Road near Brindabella Road yesterday – I counted 115 in 15 minutes at midday, but only 5 White-naped.
Out near Two Sticks Hill near the NSW border the migration was much less pronounced – only a dozen or so YFHEs in an hour in the morning, but more migrating White-naped (about 20).
Brian
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
