Halfway up Brindabella Road this morning, just as I was about to leave the bitumen, I realised that my binoculars were still in Lyons. The day was too beautiful to miss, however, so I continued on and did a binocular-free morning’s birding
in tall forest.
It was an interestingly different experience to normal, more intimate in some ways as you have to let the birds come to you (and some just won’t), use your ears even more than normal, and accept that some of the movement in the canopy will
stay as a mystery (they can’t all be Yellow-faced Honeyeaters). And of course spend lots more time just absorbing the forest atmospherics in the morning light; some of the stands down Bendora Road are simply beautiful.
The ’jizz’ of different species becomes more important when you can’t seen them well – the exact way a White-eared Honeyeater holds itself upright, for example, or the fluttering of a distant Grey Fantail. And because you are listening
to everything, the variation of calls within a species becomes clear. Highlight was an Olive Whistler, doing its characteristic three-note whistle so loudly that I had to stop the vehicle and get out and listen, whereupon the bird – an adult male, rich dark
brown with a clear white throat – flew up out of the undergrowth to a branch rising at head-height, and looked at me from only a couple of metres, before dropping down and disappearing.
By the way, Blundells Creek Road is still closed at the junction with Brindabella Road, by the Namadgi National Park sign; and the way north along a wet and slippery Warks Road from Bendora Dam Road is closed at Old Mill Road (or at least
there are warnings about progressing). Favorite spots further along Warks Road would need a good hike in.
Steve
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Steve Read
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0408 170915
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