SOUTH-WEST WESTERN AUSTRALIA
1-16 NOVEMBER 2003
TRIP REPORT
Introduction
Some friends and I spent two weeks in the south-west of Western Australia
in early November. These friends were my wife, Rosemary, Ross and Jann
Mulholland and Lorand Szucs from Sydney, Fred Smith from Melbourne and
Frank O'Connor from Perth. Of course, the trip was mostly about birds with
an emphasis on the SW endemics. We were also interested in sea-birds, with
trips planned out of Albany and to the Houtman Abrolhos Islands. As I will
describe below, the trip went exceptionally well on all fronts.
Trip highlights
On Saturday, 1 November, we all gathered in Perth in the morning and
traveled down to Albany in the afternoon. On the way down, we saw a good
number of birds, which included Laughing Turtle-Dove, Long-billed and
Short-billed Black-Cockatoos, Regent Parrot, Western Rosella, Red-capped
Parrot, Elegant Parrot, Western Yellow Robin and White-breasted Robin. We
stayed at the very comfortable Coraki Cottages. The prognosis for our
planned pelagic out of Albany was excellent.
Sunday dawned fine and cool and we set off with Spinners Charters and two
extra enthusiasts, Stuart Pell and Snow Perry. It started slowly as it
takes a fair while to clear the bay and then to get to the shelf. However,
once we got there, the birds were terrific with Grey Petrel, Sooty
Albatross, Wandering Albatross (two races - exulans and gibsoni) and
Soft-plumaged (including one dark morph), White-headed and Great-winged
Petrels. We managed to show Frank two new birds (the second of which was
his 700th species for Australia), which he was pretty pleased about. And,
Fred also got a surprise new bird in the Grey Petrel.
Early next morning, we set off for Cheyne Beach, Frank's recommended spot
for the "Big 3". We went straight to the territory of a Noisy Scrub-bird
and started looking. It must be a good spot because, in less than an hour,
we had had excellent views of a Noisy Scrub-bird in the open, two singing
Western Whipbirds on a branch and two Western Bristlebirds foraging along
the edge of a fire-break. Quite unbelievable!! We also saw Red-eared
Firetail and Western Spinebill. We spent some time looking for Ground
Parrot but couldn't find it. We were surprised to find a Southern Boobook
hunting in daylight. And that was only in the morning. In the afternoon,
we went across to Two People's Bay and found a single Rock Parrot.
As we had found our target birds in this area, on Tuesday we moved on to
Rocky Gully for Western Corella (race pastinator), to the Karri / Tingle
and Jarrah / Marri forests where we saw Western Thornbill and Red-tailed
Black-Cockatoo (race naso), and to Sugarloaf Rock at Cape Naturaliste for a
breeding Red-tailed Tropicbird. We tried to stay at the Fawlty Towers
Motel in Bunbury but there were no vacancies, so we made do elsewhere.
Wednesday and Thursday found us at Dryandra looking at Blue-breasted
Fairy-wren, Bush Stone-Curlew and Rufous Treecreeper. Some of us saw
Numbat, but unfortunately I didn't. Only Frank saw one Crested Shrike-tit
(of the western race) but it flew and could not be relocated. We did some
spotlighting, which provided lots of common mammals. However, it was not
all that exciting as we saw neither the rarer mammals nor any night-birds.
By now, it was very warm during the day but we were very comfortable for
the two nights at a farm-stay near Narrogin.
Having cleaned up the SW endemics, we were off to the dry country around
Mount Magnet. We stopped off at Flynn Road (east of Perth), which is a
reliable place (if in fact one exists) for the Shrike-tit, but we did not
see one. Heading north, we saw Mute Swan at Northam and Australian Bustard
and Red-tailed Black-Cockatoo (race samueli) on the way. It was now
getting quite hot during the day.
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