Yesterday, on the morning of one of the biggest seismic events in
Australian electoral history, having done our electoral duty via
prepoll, a friend an I did another atlas survey in the vicinity of the
NSW border.
Mt Bell is a side peak on Great Dividing Range a few km NE of Mt
Superbus, and a few km west of Wilsons Pk, the point where the McPherson
Range branches off towards the coast.
The survey had an auspicious start as we saw a grey goshawk in the
search area before we had parked the car.
The bushwalk involved making our way to the top of the main Teviot Ck
falls. Not surprisingly, we flushed an alberts lyrebird shortly after
we left the old logging road. What we weren't expecting however, was to
see what appeared to be a small dingo on the road. [I wonder if that is
the reason we only seemed to be seeing long abandoned turkey mounds in
that neck of the woods].
We passed through some extremely impressive rainforest as well as some
very attractive box forest. The day was mostly overcast, but during one
sunny patch while we were traversing the Roberts-Bell saddle, I saw the
shadow of a bird moving directly in front of me.
It was a male paradise riflebird, and the interesting thing was that it
had a couple of pale streaks down its chest. Presumably it was a
subadult.
Also of interest was a strange birdcall we heard while in the saddle.
The best way to describe it was that it sounded a bit like one of those
squeezy toys. The nearest bird call I can relate it to is a halls
babbler. Given that you don't get babblers in rainforest, that it was
not part of a series of calls [ie we heard a single call about once a
minute], it was quite loud, it sounded like it was from an elevated
location but we couldn't see or flush the culprit, I am short on
possible explanations for what the bird may have been.
On our way back to the Superbus shoulder and the exit ridge back to
Teviot Gap, we stopped off at a western lookout, which provided
extensive views of Superbus, Emu Ck, the Steamers and Sentinel Point
etc. We could also see Warwick in the distance.
While we are taking in the views, a flock of half a dozen needletails
came streaming across the range, heading east towards NSW. Normally
when I see needletails around the top of a range they tend to circle
around a bit. However this lot looked like they were on a definite
flight path and the whole group passed through our field of view in a
matter of seconds. There wasn't any obvious weather change.
I wonder how flocks of needletails can be so decisive in deciding where
they are going to go.
Another point of interest for the walk was the silence of the doves. I
don't recall hearing any pigeons calling. Perhaps it has not being a
good year for fruit doves this year.
Finally, as we were driving back along the lower sections of Teviot Ck,
we came across a group of 9 common bronzewings by the road, which was
interesting to me because I normally only seem in twos and threes.
Regards, Laurie.
Birding-Aus is on the Web at
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