Ralph Reid provided a helpful list of locations for sewage plants in the
Sydney/Blue Mountains/Wollongong region. Unfortunately, none of the Blue
Mountains plants have suitable ponds for attracting birds. The South
Katoomba site which was included in the list (decommissioned in 1999) is
deep in the Jamison Valley, surrounded by National Park and sorely visible
from most of the clifftop lookouts around Katoomba and Leura. It is now
being revegetated. It would be hard to find a more spectacularly situated
and difficult to get to sewage plant than that one - but it was never
particularly a place to see birds, although the surrounding area is good
for forest birds.
Just west of the Blue Mountains, the Lithgow sewage works (off Geordie
Street) is well worth a visit. Here you can usually see a variety of ducks
including Shovelers and Pink-eareds, sometimes large numbers of
Hoary-headed Grebes, and Lewin's Rail etc in the reedbeds. Permission is
needed to enter the site, but without this you can still get good views of
the ponds from the access road to the adjacent rubbish tip. Make sure you
get your car out of there by 4.45pm - one day I forgot about the time and
got locked in! It was a fairly long walk in the dark across paddocks and a
creek to the nearest phone!
Cheers
Carol
Carol Probets
Katoomba NSW
Birding-Aus is on the Web at
www.shc.melb.catholic.edu.au/home/birding/index.html
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send the message
"unsubscribe birding-aus" (no quotes, no Subject line)
to
|
