As is my custom, I spent new years eve camped in the rainforest down
near the NSW border with some friends. This year the venue was Long
Creek on Levers Plateau. On our walk into/from camp, we found a very
red-bellied black snake, a 2 metre carpet snake and very handsome 1.2
metre tree snake. On the mammalian front, we flushed a couple of
potteroos on the way in and had a platypus in a pool near our camp. On
the count down to new years [conveniently an hour earlier over the
border] we had a 7 year old chardonnay from Mt Barker/Margaret River
and an 11 year old shiraz from the Barossa.
Notwithstanding the long running drought, there were plenty of birds
about - all the rainforest pigeons were in attendance and making their
presence known [one of the attractions of the rainforest in summer].
A rough and incomplete birdlist for the walk is as follows:
green catbird [the first bird you notice when you step out of the car]
satin bowerbird [heard only]
regent bowerbird
alberts lyrebird [one running across the borderfence track]
red browed firetail
yellow throated scrubwren
long-billed scrubwren
eastern yellow robin
golden whistler
grey shrike thrush
fantailed cuckoo
rufous fantail
grey fantail
pied currawong
black faced monarch
spectacled monarch
lewins honeyeater
russet tailed thrush
crimson rosella
king parrot
yellow tailed black cockatoo
noisy pitta
laughing kookaburra
brown cuckoo dove
emerald ground dove
wonga pigeon
wompoo
rose-crowned fruit dove
white headed pigeon
top knot pigeon
eastern whipbird
I think I heard some logrunners and paradise riflebirds.
To round things off we saw a large flock [~100] of white throated
needletails heading west as we were halfway down the range to the Lions
Rd [in the vicinity of 28 18S, 152 52 E] on the way home. The first
one I saw was slashing along a few metres above the road and had me
initially thinking it was a hobby, till I noticed the white undertail
coverts and the other birds came streaming through. They didn't hang
around, so I couldn't tell if there were any fork tails in the group,
but it was a deep milling crowd that continued on in the direction of
Mt Lindsay.
Regards, Laurie.
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