Hi Birders,
What a wonderful thing is the combination of Birding Aus and the birders who
post to it!
Armed with a bunch of information found by searching the archive and
following a RFI direct to Peter Fuller, who responded most generously, my wife
and I enjoyed a very productive couple of days at Aireys Inlet (1.5 hours drive
SW of Melbourne).
A very early start in search of the rufous bristle bird on the cliff walk
adjacent to the section of Eagle Rock Crescent east of the lighthouse failed to
even produce the sound of a bristle bird after 3 hours! At the more civilised
hour of 5:30 pm at Point Addis they were to be seen in abundance. We walked from
the carpark to the beach in the afternoon sun and returned along a path that
intersects the road close to a public toilet. Our first sighting was a brief
glimpse of what was unquestionably an RBB on this track. Two more shot into the
surrounding scrub and called vigorously as we walked onto a walkway beside the
public toilet. Returning twenty minutes later we watched a RBB for some minutes
as it foraged in a clearing behind the toilet. Driving out from the carpark we
saw three bristlebirds beside the road ? one being obliging enough to cross the
road in leisurely fashion 50 meters in front of our stationary car.
Sandwiched between the bristle bird hunts had been a nice viewing of two
juvenile blue winged parrots sitting in full view on a wire fence beside the
Anglesea coal mine; a wonderful and unexpected sighting of a Bassian Thrush from
a couple of meters away in the garden of our B&B in Aireys inlet; and a pair
of Hooded Plovers on the back beach of Point Roadknight.
Four ticks in a day thanks to Birding
Aus.
