I spent New Year on the NSW South Coast at Broulee near Moruya.
The Yellow-tailed Black-cockatoo heard from my bed at 6:30am on Jan 1
was a good omen for 2000. The next afternoon I was hanging towels and
swimmers out to dry after a hard morning at the beach when there was an
enornmous racket - it seemed every bird in the village went into the air.
There were 30+ Sulphur-Crested Cockatoos screeching and a similar number
of Galahs and Rainbow Lorrikeets and at least 10 other species.
I expected a WB Sea-eagle to cruise by but the raptor that came into
view wasn't a Sea-eagle or anything else I knew well. It helpfully did
a treetop level circuit as I grabbed my binoculars and allowed to get
good views of only my third Square-tailed Kite. A first for NSW for me.
A week later I was piggy-backing my 1 year old daughter home on the beach
when we spotted 4 Hooded Plovers above the high-tide mark - 3 adults
and 1 juvenile. My partner had seen 3 adult birds on the same beach in
April and November. Broulee Beach is busy over summer so they must
have been lucky to breed successfully. HANZAB actually mentions them
breeding at the same location in 1988-89.
Last someone requested a NSW location for Hooded Plover - to find these
birds I'd suggest parking at the Broulee Surf Lifesaving Club and then
walk north around the rocks and over the sand spit and along Broulee
Beach searching above the hide-tide mark. If you dip, then walk around
Broulee island for consolation views of Sooty Oystercatchers.
Another pleasant sight on several days was Gang-gangs feeding on Bitou
Bush seeds in the dunes. Gang-gangs are probably too few to make much
impact but it can only help.
Andrew Taylor
To unsubscribe from this list, please send a message to
Include ONLY "unsubscribe birding-aus" in the message body (without the
quotes)
|
