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Having seen Scarlet-chested Parrot at Gluepot, my plans for
Easter were now up in the air as I had been planning an Eyre Peninsula trip for
this species. I decided to stay closer to home- give me a chance to take a
holiday from taking holidays!
But before Easter I headed off to Terrick Terrick National
Park north of Bendigo to join Chris Coleborn in his Plains Wanderer count. A few
years ago several paddocks of native grassland were added to the recently
declared Terrick Terrick National Park. How these paddocks had avoided the
plough for the hundred and thirty odd years of settlement is a minor miracle,
but it meant that a small parcel of habitat had managed to survive. The
area had been lightly grazed by sheep, but the structure and composition of the
native grasses had survived so that the site has become a refuge for plains
species that were once common across much of Southern Australia.
Chris organises a regular count of Plains Wanderer with the
local Department of Natural Resources and Environment officers and allows
birders keen to tick off this enigmatic species to tag along. So even though I
was going for a new bird, I could salve my conscience by helping out in an
"official" population census.
As I headed out onto the dry plains I flushed a Black
Falcon from a roadside fence. It landed in a bare paddock, giving me a
good look to make sure it wasn't just a dark phase Brown Falcon- a bird that has
confused me many times in the past. This bird was in magnificent condition. I
hope it hadn't been fattening up on Plains Wanderers.
I stopped further on to admire the native grasslands in the
fading light. Many people would find it hard to admire such a habitat,
particularly at this time of year when it is bone dry and all the grasses seem
to have died off. But even though this grassland looked parched and
barren, the plants were still standing, unlike the nearby paddocks where the
exotic grass species had completely died off leaving big bare swathes of exposed
soil in the landscape just waiting to be blown away by the next big wind.
Chris and a car load of birders including Bob Way and Bruce
Cox pulled up having just checked out a population of melanistic magpies. Chris
asked if I needed Black-faced Woodswallow and pointed out a fenceline
about a kilometre up the road, saying they were often there. Sure enough in the
area he pointed out was a small flock of Black-faced Woodswallow.
You can't beat local knowledge.
A group of about twenty birders, locals and DNRE staff
gathered at the old homestead site in a steady drizzle. This was the first
substantial rain in the area for about three months, and it didn't let up. The
method for finding Plains Wanderer is to wait until dark, jump on the back of a
ute with a spotlight and criss cross the paddocks in formation. The birds are
less wary at night and more likely to flush whereas in the day they stay put in
the grass, relying on their incredibly cryptic colouring to avoid the
patrolling Black Faclons and Spotted Harriers.
Well that's the theory on how to find them. As we headed off
into the pouring rain I had my doubts. Yet within 200 metres we had found our
first Plains Wanderer- a single male. This was to be the first
of a bonanza of Plains Wanderers. By the end of the night we had seen twenty of
them- a phenomenal return including two brilliant females and a male with three
chicks, quite a late breeding record. Other birds spotlighted were
Stubble Quail, Little Button-quail and Singing Bushlark as well
as House Mouse and Fat-tailed Dunnart. A night well worth the soaking.
Easter arrived with my total on 387. On the night before
Good Friday I went and watched a bunch of Magpies get slaughtered by a pack of
Tigers, a very depressing sight indeed, and one that I fear I will be witness to
for another 22 weeks. Maybe once duck season is over I can get Laurie Levy and
his mates to run out onto the MCG every weekend and stop the
carnage.
I did do a bit of birding over the Easter weekend, (I have now
got so into the habit of birding that even on my weekend off I couldn't help
myself) heading out to Point Cook on the Sunday and Werribee on the Monday. Not
a great deal at Point Cook, but it is always worth a look. The purpose of the
Werribee trip was to put in a bit of an effort going through the lagoons looking
to see if the Northern Shoveller seen last year was still around. Rumours
abounded that it had been seen since it had moved off Lake Borrie last Spring,
but our reasonably intensive efforts failed to find it.
We did however see masses of waterfowl. Pink-eared Duck and
Aussie Shoveller were most numerous numbering in the tens of thousands, with
lesser numbers (ie thousands only) of other species, including a major highlight
of 90 Freckled Ducks. (Apparently as many as 120 had been seen that week.) Add
to that big numbers (80+) of White-winged Black Tern and 3
Cape Barren Goose, made for a great days birding. We then
checked out the T-section/Austin Road Lagoons which had thousands of roosting
waders including Knot, Black-tailed Godwit and Double-banded Plover. As the
light was fading we decided to call it quits even though we still had a few
hundred waders to scan through, and head off to check up on the Banded Lapwings
out the back of Laverton. As we were leaving we bumped into Andrew Dunn and
Danny and Ken Rodgers. They asked us what was around and we told them, adding
that there was nothing of particular significance. They went and found five
Pectoral Sandpipers! And to make matters worse, Danny got photos just to make me
feel even more gripped off.
If only we'd stayed and looked through those last few hundred
birds. Now there's a crucial lesson to all aspiring Big Twitchers- never turn
your back on an unidentified bird; it always could be something new, something
rare. We did however find the Banded Lapwings and they, like the Plains Wanderer
had young. The site I usually see them at is the only regular place around
Melbourne I know of for Banded Lapwing. My site is in a horse paddock- the birds
seem to like the short cropped grass- but you can see the encroaching suburban
developments creeping inexorably forward like a modern day Burnham Wood. I hold
little hope that we will have Banded Lapwings at all around Melbourne within ten
years.
So I begin April with the total on 389. There are still quite
a few birds I can add in Southern Victoria (Striated Field Wren being one that I
heard yet again at Werribee but failed to actually see) but as I am not planning
any trips for a while, the four hundred looks like it could be a few weeks
away.
What I didn't know was at that very moment, Trevor Ford
was peering at a very odd looking gull on Bribie Island, South East
Queensland....
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