Following Carol Probet’s
posting on Monday I spent the last two days in the Capertee Valley (NSW Central Tablelands north-west of Sydney) chasing Regent Honeyeaters. Had no luck yesterday as it was
hot and windy but today I watched up to nine birds for more than an hour on
Crown Station Road as they
initially fought running battles with Noisy Friarbirds for the flowering Box Mistletoe,
and then retreated to the Ironbarks
for a while and gleaned insects from the foliage. They must be getting adequate
nectar as they had sufficient energy to repeatedly launch themselves high into
the air in spectacular hawking flights to capture flying insects. They then settled
down to loafing and preening themselves in the foliage until the Noisy
Friarbirds moved on. The Regents then returned to the mistletoe flowers.
Several of the birds were immature and were occasionally fed by adults. When I
came back out past the site two hours later there were still two birds feeding
in the mistletoe flowers.
I had a fortuitous sighting of a
Nightjar yesterday when I startled a small wallaby near a track off Crown Station Road. As the wallaby rushed away through the undergrowth it put
up the Nightjar into a short flight before it dropped down into the leaf
litter. The bird was a very pale rufous colour with
long narrow wings and resembled the illustration of an immature Spotted
Nightjar in Pizzey’s Field Guide. I walked into
the area where the bird landed and put it up again but this time it flew out of
sight. It called several times and it was similar to the last few notes of this
species on CD5 of “A Field Guide to Australian Birdsong”. Would
this species’ range extend as far east as the Capertee Valley?
Neil Kirby
Winmalee (80km west of Sydney)
