For most of Saturday,
25th October a group of Cumberland Bird Observers Club members
including myself enjoyed a pleasant outing to the Hawkesbury area (approx 60km
north of Sydney CBD).
As leader of the
2nd part of the outing I met the CBOC group at about
8:30 am in Macquarie Park in Windsor taking over Keith Brandwood who led the early part of
the outing from 6am
commencing at the McGrath?s Hill STW next to Windsor. At Macquarie Park we enjoyed watching 2 pairs of White-winged Trillers in
and around one Tree. In this tree a female Triller (with its male partner
nearby) was seen sitting on a nest (incubating eggs I would presume) and also in
this same tree was a Willy Wagtail feeding 2 almost fledged young and an
abandoned Magpie Larks nest (I have seen all these 3 black and white birds nest in the same
tree or in close proximity before with also Restless Flycatchers). The other
pair of Trillers were aerial chasing, the male chasing the female which I guess
is some courtship thing.
We then moved on to the
Windsor-Richmond turf farms on the other side of the
Hawkesbury River where we saw a pair of Banded Lapwings beside
Cornwallis
Rd in the
Windsor end of the Turf Farms. On the
Richmond side we came across many Singing Bushlarks, several
Rufous and a couple of male Brown Songlarks, Richards Pipit and Skylarks singing
away in the Lucerne paddocks. One of the Singing Bushlarks singing high in
the air mimicked the calls of
several birds (all found in the Hawkesbury) in its long sequence including that
of the Stubble Quail, Richard?s Pipit, Golden-headed Cisticola and
Chestnut-breasted Mannikin (it was like the Lyrebird of the turf farms!). We
also saw in these paddocks 3 Stubble Quail, heard Brown Quail, another female
White-winged Triller and about 10 Nutmeg Mannikins. There were only a few
raptors about including one Whistling Kite and a Swamp Harrier. There were also
10 Cattle Egrets (in breeding plumage) still about. These Cattle Egrets towards
summer usually move out of the Hawkesbury and head north to their breeding
grounds (probably breed around Newcastle area).
We then moved on to one of
Sydney?s best bush land reserves, Mitchell Park at Cattai where we all enjoyed
enjoyed watching and hearing the numerous Scarlet Honeyeaters, an Azure
Kingfisher, Dollarbird, Rufous Whistler etc while having our lunch beside Cattai
Creek.
After lunch we walked into
the bush behind the swamp seeing many Honeyeaters, mainly Scarlet Honeyeaters
(with pairs chasing each other and one pair collecting nesting material) but
there were also Lewin?s, Yellow-faced, White-cheeked, Yellow-tufted, White-naped
(feeding fledglings) Honeyeaters and Eastern Spinebills all after the Melaleuca
blossoms. Other birds seen included a couple of Yellow-tailed Black-cockatoos, a
few Sacred Kingfishers, Olive-backed Oriole and White-throated
Gerygones.
Around mid afternoon, we
then moved towards the rainforest trail further up Cattai Creek hoping to see
some more birds before the approach of a big storm where we managed to see a
pair of Cicadabirds (male chasing female with good views of the male) and Leaden
Flycatchers calling before the start of the trail. As we walked a few hundred
metres through the rainforest, the heavens opened on us and it poured, hailed
and the lightening struck a few times close to us when we decided then we should
get call it a day.
Edwin
Vella
