Dear Birding-Ausers,
Fred Smith and I made the long trek (by car, actually) from Melbourne (in
southern Victoria, pretty much north of Tasmania) to Ballina (in northern
NSW) over Easter to see the South Island Pied Oystercatcher.
Courtesy of Bo Totterman, who identified this bird in late 1998, we saw the
SIPO briefly on Easter Monday morning and again, in a more relaxed and
thorough way, in the afternoon. Superficially, of course, it is very
similar to our Pied Oystercatcher. When you see it live though, it is
quite different. Much stockier (cause by the much shorter tibia) with a
much longer and uniformly thinner bill that gives it quite a different
profile. I hadn't realised how much variation there is in the wingbars and
the white up the back of Pied Oystercatchers until I really started looking
on South Ballina beach. However, the SIPO still had significantly more
white in both these areas than any OZPO we saw. Mike Carter's photos in
the last two issues of Australian Birding demonstrate these points rather
well.
Now, the tricky question is 'Would I have recognised these clear
differences if I saw a SIPO on a beach with a flock of OZPOs??' I am not
sure that I would have looked at the flock closely enough or known enough
about the alternatives to think that an unusual bird was anything more than
an unusual OZPO. I think it is remarkable that Bo Totterman of South
Ballina was able to realise that the differences were significant.
We spent eleven days wandering around north-eastern NSW and environs and
found some interesting things to look at. The other bird highlights were
(in no particular order):
- Plum-headed Finches at Gulargambone (north of Gilgandra)
- Regent Bowerbird at Washpool Range NP (east of Glen Innnes)
- Comb-crested Jacana at Grafton
- Two juvenile Masked Boobies off the beach at South Ballina
- Alberts Lyrebird just inland from Ballina
- Chestnut-breasted Mannikin, Tawny Grassbird and Spangled Drongo near
South Ballina
- Striped and White-cheeked Honeyeaters, Varied Triller and Little
Bronze-Cuckoo at Broadwater NP
- Spectacled Monarch at Iluka
- Forest Raven near Barrington Tops and Taree
- Square-tailed Kite along the river near Nambucca Heads
- Two Black-necked Storks south of Port Macquarie
- Pink Robin in Cattai NP north-west of Sydney
We also had a good range of raptors, lots of waders, a variety of pigeons
and loads of honeyeaters. We tried and failed to find several other
species. We looked for Rufous Scrub-bird at Washpool and at Barrington
Tops, but there was nary a squeak. We looked at several locations for
Beach Stone-curlew and didn't see any. (Presumably, the hoards of Easter
holidaymakers did not make it any easier.) We also visited South West
Rocks in the forlorn hope that a Grey Ternlet might fly by, but one didn't.
We also thought we were lucky that our visit coincided with the scheduled
Sydney boat trip for April. However, as it turned out, we weren't so lucky
as the boat broke down not far outside the heads and we had to wait for the
Water Police to tow us back in. We actually needed to break down when we
had made it to the shelf, rather than on the way, as we could have then
watched for interesting pelagic birds to fly by. Inshore, there was not
too much exciting happening. In the end, the abbreviated trip did not add
much depth or interest to our bird list.
We saw a few mammals, the most interesting being a Parma Wallaby at
Washpool. We saw only a handful of rabbits, which I found most pleasing.
The weather was interesting. It rained on every day except for two, often
quite heavily. While this was a bit boring, it didn't interfere with our
birding. We were going to try and get to Border Ranges NP in far north
NSW, but didn't want to risk the roads and weather. That was the only
planned thing that we didn't do.
Birding-Aus was again very helpful in the planning. I have been collecting
interesting site information that I thought would help with planning future
trips, much of it about NSW. For instance, information on Beach
Stone-curlews from Alan Morris was useful (even though the birds were not
there). And a March trip report from Edwin Vella on Barrington / Copeland
/ Gloucester Tops was also useful. However, we didn't find many of the
interesting birds that Edwin did. The bird population had changed quite
significantly in the month or so.
So, all in all, we had an excellent trip with 225 species of birds, a few
mammals, a few memorable incidents and lots of humidity of one sort or
another.
Chris
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