Superb Fruit Dove Pictures!!

[Kevin Vang <>]

Dear Fellow Birders

Go to our site

www.birdquest.net

Click on Breaking News and then click on Sheldon Forest.

There you will see great shots of the Fruit-Dove in question.

Wojciech and I took advantage of a few free hours to go to Sheldon Forest to find the Fruit Dove.  We started out in the pouring rain having seen that the weather radar on the Web showed the line of showers passing in about an hour.  It was slow to pass so we went to Bobbin Head for lunch.  It stopped raining, so we began our quest.  

First we parked at the far end of Warragul Road.   That was mistake number one.  So we spent about two hours heading south until the GPS well and truly barked at us that we were no where near Sheldon Forest.  Then we orienteered north through hill and dale and peoples’ backyards, found a stream which ran into another stream and then finally a trail with nice markers on it.  We continued north and after 4 hours, since we started hiking, we finally found a bridge with big reeds and privet bushes.  No Fruit-Dove to be seen.  

So we hiked up the hill where we were even with the tops of the privet trees and sat silently listening to the dripping of the leaves which is nice to hear in Sydney after a long absence of rain.  We sat for an hour and saw only white-eyes and scrubwrens.  We were about to give up when we heard the trademark hoo-hoo-hoo.  Woj and I quietly rushed down and after some minutes, Wojciech found it sitting nicely but very well camouflaged in the leaves and the fading grey of the day.

We began our photo-shoot, telling the dove to turn this way and that.  It just sort of sat there looking quite unphased by our entreaties. We did get a good shot of the tail. After some minutes, it went to eat some berries before running off into some denser bushes which was good as it was getting dark by this time.  Some Cuckoo-Doves also showed up which we photographed.

We GPS’d her as follows:

Waypoint 248
S 33 44’36.7’’
E151 07’40.8’’
87 metres

Enjoy the photos!!!  

Kevin and Wojciech