Six weeks after the fire on Mayfair Rd, all the undergrowth has gone,
ridges, gullies and even small dams are exposed - patently the present
vegetation is regrowth on prewar pastureland. Most of the groundcover was
lantana which will not survive the fire's heat, but bright green epicormic
buds are shooting from the black trunks and bases of even broomstick-thin
eucalypts, with bark turned to charcoal but insulating the tissue within.
Excepting Pardalotes, Weebills, and White-browed Scrubwrens, the birds
are back. but in reduced numbers. A female Cicadabird, briefly mistaken for
a Triller, and a Lathams Snipe on our mini-wetland provided the main
excitement, but Eastern Shrike-tit and White-eared Honeyeater were nice
"unusual sightings", in tall unburned euycalypts. .
The Satin Bowerbird's bower is reduced to a splatter of melted blue
plastic. The ancient hollow Ironbark, nesting site for generations of Wood
Ducks, burned down from inside out, the poor old motherduck was wailing at
holes in other trees which were just too small. At least four Whipbirds are
back, on a charcoal and dirt diet, and one family of Variegated Fairy-wrens
survived in a garden which was saved, everything around having burned.
The Valley pastures are lush after raining 100mm, which rain popped one
end of our concrete pool, emptied by firefighters, out of the ground, but
Dusky Woodswallows, Welcome Swallows and both Martins were in the air this
weekend, and a Brown Goshawk flew into the pool after a frog in the bottom.
A Night Heron roosts on the creek in a neighbours place, and Pacific Baza
was seen by two other budding birdos independently last week.
Saw seventy-one species over the weekend.
Cheers
Michael
Michael Hunter
Mulgoa Valley
50km west of Sydney Harbour Bridge
Birding-Aus is on the Web at
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