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I left Victoria on the tenth with my total on 471,
heading for Gluepot. Even though I'll be through this way again in September, I
thought it was worth stopping at Gluepot as any species I saw now would save me
crucial days later in the year.
Things at Gluepot seem pretty dry, but there was
still plenty of bird activity. You can tell Gluepot is good quality mallee not
just because of the mega rarities, but also because of all the Chestnut
Quail-thrush. By no means rare elsewhere in the Mallee, I am always thrilled to
come across one of these ground dwelling birds, because it seems to happen so
infrequently. At Gluepot you are virtually kicking them out of the way. At
nearly every spot I stopped I would inevitably turn up a pair. Same goes for
Striated Grasswren- I saw them at three sites, and at one spot bore
witness to a turf war between two gangs of them.
It was too early for Red-lored Whistlers to be
calling and thus I dipped on them. Did see plenty of Rufous, Gilbert's and
Golden though.
I'd been told that the Mallefowl stake out had been
producing the goods of late. The mound looked great; all hollowed with rows
of vegetation waiting to be raked in, but on six hour's vigil over the next two
days, not a whiff of the birds. Walking back to the car after my third
unsuccessful attempt I came across a honeyeater and thought "Gee, that
Yellow-plumed looks like a Grey-fronted" and walked on without thinking too much
about it. Then another hundred or so metres on I saw a typical Yellow-plumed and
it suddenly dawned on me that the previous bird had indeed been a
Grey-fronted Honeyeater, an addition I'd almost overlooked
because I hadn't considered it a possibilty.
Onto my main target, Black-eared Miner. The bulk of
their colonies are out of bounds to the public, but there are some the ordinary
punter can access. Trouble is, there are so many "mongrel miners" amongst them
that it can be very tricky picking out a genuine Black-eared, even if you can
get onto the birds in the first place. While searching the mallee, a startled
Emu bolted away from me in a hunched sprint, an odd mode of coneyance I
thought, and sure enough at the base of the mallee clump it had bolted from was
a nest of eight massive green eggs, the third such nest reported at
Gluepot in the last month .
Eventually, in the middle of old growth
mallee- prime Black-eared habitat- I tracked down a miner... a
Yellow-throated. Well actually a hybrid, but one that was way more on the
Yellow-throated side of the family. It was with two other birds. The second bird
was a lot darker- darker above, darker on the rump, and below the chin, but
still too pale to be considered a "good" Black-eared. The third bird was much
more promising- my first glimpse revealed a very dark chin, but as
often happens, I never got another look at it.
Back to the car after more fruitless searching,
when just six hundred metres from the homestead a miner with an all dark rump
flew across the road, joined by at least twenty others. They stopped to feed in
the meagre flowering of a mallee tree, allowing me the chance to go through
them all individually. And there it was- a genuine Black-eared
Miner standing out from all the surrounding mongrels.
Exaltant, I returned to pack up camp.It had been a
long time since I had seen this species, and the last (and first) time
was under very different circumstances- my 21st Birthday.
Eschewing the usual celebrations of drunken uncles and bad speeches I'd
headed off into the mallee to try and get a lifer on my birthday. I got lost,
developed near pneumonia and didn't speak to a soul for the entire day- best
birthday party I've ever had.
It was onward to a brief shopping stopover in
Adelaide and to pick up the toiletries bag I'd left at John Cox's house
when I went for the Hudwit in March. After three months it was lovely to be
finally able to brush my hair. Sure I could have bought a new brush, but that
would have been disloyal to the old brush which had been in my service for
years. That brush has great sentimental value to me- it used to be the dog's
brush.
Dropping in on John at his house surrounded by
glorious wetlands chockers with Avocets, Ducks and Native-hens, I was able to
glean a great deal of information about birds in the Centre. David Harper
dropped by and we finalised our rendezvous out on the Strezlecki Track in
August. He is way too confident of finding Grey Falcon for my liking. Sure he's
never dipped on them out there before, but this time he has me tagging along to
jinx him.
By the time I'd left John's and done the rest of my
shopping it was too dark to do any birding. Next morning at Port Augusta I
went down to the shore to have a last look at the sea. Next time I am standing
by on a seashore it will be the Gulf of Carpentaria in about five weeks time. As
if to farewell me, a group of Bottlenosed Dolphins paraded past.
A brief stop just five minutes from Port Augusta at
the Arid Lands Botanic Gardens saw me already in an unfamiliar landscape with
unfamiliar birds. One of them turned out to be Chirruping Wedgebill
calling vigorously.
Looking northwards, the whole dry continent
stretched before me. I was put in thought of John McDougall Stuart who set off
on a similar route a hundred and forty years earlier. Here was I, with an
air conditioned 4WD and the option of staying in a motel virtually every
night of my trip, yet the enormity of the journey and the harshness of the
country filled me with apprehension. How must he have felt setting off with a
bunch of camels, horses and blokes all of questionable quality? Stuart eventually made his target and then pretty much lost
the will to live. I am hoping to for half of his outcomes. (The success, not the
loss of will to live- if I wanted to lose that I could have stayed in Melbourne
and followed Collingwood in the finals.)
And so I set off into the vast
interior.
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