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Folks,
I've reported this sighting to Debbie Saunders, the
Swift Parrot Project Officer, but thought it might also be of general
interest.
We were in Stawell overnight last Sunday, and Dad
and I went out early Monday morning - fine and flat still, after overnight rain
- to Deep Lead, about 6 km north-west of the town. We crossed the railway
line, and turned left about 1 km east of the level crossing into Mutzig Lane,
which runs into the forest after a couple of hundred metres. Looked a good
enough spot to start poking around.
The first bird we saw to identify was a Swift
Parrot! This after about four or five Swift Parrot/ Regent Honeyeater
suvey weekends in the past, without a sniff of either of the target
species. (Simon had a really good area lined up for us to prospect last
May, but another commitment got in the way and we couldn't take part that
time.) In the three quarters of an hour or so we were in the area,
probably never moving much more than 100 metres or so from the car, Swift
Parrots were audible virtually all the time, and we had sensational views of
several individuals posing on bare branches within 10 metres or less, in the
full glow of the early sun.
An interesting aspect of the birds' behaviour was
that they seemed to be drinking from the wet foliage of the trees. They
were mostly in ones, twos or threes at first, moving methodically through the
leaves and running their bills along individual leaves. There were also
lots of short flights from tree to tree. The reason we think they were drinking
rather than feeding was that several birds did the same thing along bare
twigs. There was also no percussion-type sound of lerps being removed such
as we heard a couple of times from (red-tipped) Striated Pardalotes. Over
the time we were there, the birds gradually seemed to congregate into larger
groups, with one flock of about 15 belting through just before we left at around
9 am. However, bearing in mind the constant mobility of the birds, we made
a conservative estimate of about 20-25 birds in the immediate area.
There were also plenty of Honeyeaters, especially
Fuscous, Black-chinned, White-naped and Yellow-tufted, as well as Red
Wattlebirds. Several of the Yellow Gums were in heavy bud, with a couple
just starting to flower, although neither the Parrots nor the Honeyeaters seemed
to be showing much interest in feeding from the blossom. We'll be back to
the area for the August survey in a couple of weeks - hope there are still a few
around then to count.
Also, apropos of the recent postings about
early-calling Cuckoos, I spent a couple of hours last Thursday afternoon with
Wim Vader, the list's entertaining Tromso correspondent, at the Royal Botanic
Gardens Cranbourne, and there was a Fan-tailed Cuckko calling about 1 km west of
the main picnic area. Wim was excellent company and it was great to have
the chance to meet him and enjoy his enjoyment of our birds (despite its being
just a little galling that his Australian list is over 100 longer than
mine!)
Regards,
Jack
Krohn
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