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Dear Birders
Took a walk with a birding friend last Sunday up
the old forestry road past the Gold Mine at Copeland S.F (nw of Gloucester, NSW
- 32 00 08 / 1511 49 06) from 6.30 am. Best sights
were
1. Pair of Logrunners sitting on logs, scratching
in the litter, and looking at us while we looked at them for a good 5
minutes.
2. A mega bathing incident at a point in the
track where it bends left and on the right is a sharp drop through thick
scrub and creepers to several pools remaining in the creek bed. We watched
a Yellow Robin, 2 Eastern Spinebills, Grey and Rufous Fantails,
Silvereyes, Yellow-faced and White-naped Honeyeaters bathing, with a
Yellow-throated Scrubwren, Spectacled Monarch and Grey Shrike-thrush watching -
and Brown Thornbills and Brown Gerygones busy in the bush behind us. There were
lots of useful creepers across the creek bed which provided perfect preening
spots for the often very wet birds; Yellow-faced and White-naped HEs were the
most active "dunkers", often flying up into the sun light to preen in the open,
while the fantails incorporated feeding along with a bit of bathing. On the way
back about 1.5 hrs later, there were two male Golden Whistlers indulging all on
their own.
3. Further back down the track we found a family of
Black-faced Monarchs (adult pair with 2 fledglings) being very noisy
in a sunlit opening in the thick rainforest - calling loudly (reminded me
of Whipbirds graty noisies) and chasing insects, and preening in between bouts
of activity.
But there were no figs in the fig trees and
therefore no Wompoo Pigeons in the fig trees, although we heard them along with
Noisy Pittas, Brown Cuckoo-doves and Wonga Pigeons.
And last night it rained in Gloucester !!!!
Wonderful but we still want more.... as does almost everyone in Australia except
a few up in the north.
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