Greetings all,
Just a quick note on some birding near Melbourne on Sunday. My wife and I
took out a guy that I work with who wanted to see what this birding thing
was all about (since he has to hear about birding stuff pretty much every
day of the week). We decided that the Western Treatment Plant in Werribee
would be a bit of a shock so we opted for three stops during the day: Pt.
Cook, You Yangs, Brisbane Ranges.
The weather wasn't too good in the morning at Pt. Cook / Spectacle Lake but
it was reasonably birdy. We saw a few Australasian Shovelers briefly
before they took off, 2 Black-fronted Dotterels, loads of white-faced
herons, several Flame Robins, some black-tailed native hens and the usual
common waterfowl and New Holland HEs you would expect to be there. Near
the beach we saw about 8 Pied Oystercatchers and a couple of Pacific Gulls.
Maybe this is common here but we saw at least 8 Brown Quail feeding in the
deserted picnic area near the beach.
The You Yangs were pretty quiet with very few honeyeaters around. This was
the first time I have visited the You Yangs without seeing a Purple-crowned
Lorikeet (although several were heard). The best spot was a quiet area of
the Big Rock picnic area. Here we sat at a picnic table and almost had our
heads taken off by a pair of Scarlet Robins. Then a Flame Robin flew in a
battled with the Scarlets possibly for hawking locations? In this same
spot there were 3 species of Thornbill (Brown, Yellow, Yellow-rumped) as
well as the best bird of the day, a Speckled Warbler (also the most
surprising sight of the day). The Horsefields Bronze Cuckoos were also
rather aggressive and even my lame imitation of their call brought a pair
charging in to check us out.
The Brisbane Ranges were very quiet as well. There were reasonable numbers
of White-naped Honeyeaters but the usually super common Yellow-tufted HEs
were scarse (I saw only one). We didn't have time to drive in to the
Powerful Owl spot but we did catch up with most of the common species. We
finished off the day with about 56 species lots of which were new for my
first time friend.
Scott
P. Scott Chandry
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