G'day all,
Due to my inability to master the technology, I have been
unable to send any postings whilst travelling over the last three weeks,
and as so much has happened, I will have to take a couple of postings to
fit it all in.
So here goes...
On Jan 30th with the total still at 198, I finally got to
Norfolk Island.
I had left early in the morning to catch a flight to Sydney,
hearing but not seeing Purple-crowned Lorikeet in the Tullamarine Airport
Carpark. Once in Sydney I was told to wait around for news of a possible flight
to Norfolk. So I spent the entire day hanging around the long term car park,
where I had parked my car three days earlier. There is a really nice looking
wetland nearby, between the freeway and the airport and I managed to amuse
myself there for an hour or two seeing 28 species. No new additions to the year
list, but it did contain a few Sharp-tailed Sandpipers, Great and Little Egrets
as well as breeding Coot and Swamphen.
Eventually there was a flight. The problem had been that the
island had been fog-bound for five days- essentially, the planes couldn't
find the island! And so at eleven o'clock at night I finally arrived at
Norfolk Island, three and a half days late.
What was to have been a leisurely week spent exploring the
island now became a mad dash against time to try and see everything. The
advantage of trying to do this on Norfolk is that it is only 8 by 5 kilometres
long. On the first day I managed to see nearly everything I was after.
The first time I hit the coast netted me five year ticks;
White Tern, Red Junglefowl, Black-winged Petrel, Red-tailed Tropicbird
and White-capped Noddy, the first four being lifers
for me. Not a bad return for five minutes birding- can't remember the last time
that's happened. My milestone 200th bird could have been any one of the exciting
seabirds or island endemics but sadly it turned out to be Red Junglefowl, the
ubiquitous chook-a "plastic" bird as some would say, but definitely running
wild, probably since the first convict settlement was abandoned in the first
decade of the Nineteenth Century.
By the end of the day I had covered most of the habitats on
Norfolk and continued to add birds to my year list (and life list- those species
marked with an asterisk). Onto the list went Slender-billed
White-eye*, Masked Booby* Sooty Tern, Common Noddy, Mallard, Emerald Dove,
Norfolk Island Gerygone* and Lesser Frigatebird*,
quite an unexpected sighting, Whimbrel and Ruddy
Turnstone.
The White-eyes are a fabulous bird, quite bold at times as
they would pass through in noisy feeding parties of up to twenty. They weren't
nearly as common though as our Silvereye which would be the most numerous bird
of the forest. Maybe it was just because I was looking more closely than
usual at all Silvereyes in the forlorn hope of a most probably extinct
White-chested White-eye, but the Silvereyes on Norfolk seemed to be
brighter and have more obvious black around the eyes and lores
than back home, well at least compared to the races in
Victoria.
I have included Mallard in my list as though I agree with Dion
Hobcroft's posting from late last year that they are all probably
Mallard/Pacific Black Duck hybrids, I would say the genetic balance
is heavily weighted toward the Mallard end. I saw several virtual full
Mallard females, and only one bird that I would consider anything like a natural
Black Duck. This is a salutary lesson in the genetic
swamping capabilities of the M Mallard. According to information at
the National Parks Office, the first Mallards didn't arrive on Norfolk till
1971. In thirty years they have come to completely dominate. Surely this
is incentive to lobby to get all those "cute" city pond Mallards discreetly
taken out before they inflict the same genetic damage on out mainland Black
Ducks.
Over the remaining two days I was able to pick up most of the
birds I'd missed on, namely Grey Ternlet*, Wandering Tattler, Masked
Woodswallow (apparently a flock arrived from Australia a while back and
are still surviving)and California Quail . It would be
interesting doing a Twitchathon here as my daily lists were: 36, 34, 37, 28.
Competition would be fierce as every team would be able to cover the same spots
about five times over. A score of forty would be the equivalent of getting 250
on the mainland; a two species difference would equate to a landslide
victory.
On the Saturday I was able to get across to Phillip Island
which lies a few miles off Norfolk and is a major sea bird colony, with some
species present here that have been eliminated from Norfolk. It is truly a
spectacular place, and provides an opportunity to get really close to the
birds. Aside from the great views of nesting Tropicbirds, Ternlets, Noddies and
others, I also added Kermadec Petrel and Australasian
Gannet to the list.
To be continued...
