Dear Birding-Ausers,
Ro and I went to the Victorian Mallee for the long weekend in early June.
We spent 3 days in the Sunset country and 1 at Ned's Corner, seeing 107
species for the trip.
We started near Hattah and quickly found a couple of groups of Mallee Emu-wrens
and our only White-backed Swallow. We then ventured in to the eastern end of
Pheeneys Track, where we
camped, and saw some more Emu-wrens and several groups of Striated Grasswrens.
We travelled along Pheeneys, which was very quiet except for a nice
group of Chestnut-crowned Babblers, and camped on South Bore Track. The layers
of ice in the billy, on the
car, on the tent, etc were compensated for by good views of a male Red-lored
Whistler, which visited in the morning. However, there were no Grey-fronted or
Purple-gaped Honeyeaters in areas where I have seen them regularly in the
past. On the way out of the Sunset, we bumped into our only White-fronted
Honeyeater out in the very cleared areas where I wouldn't expect this species.
We
saw White-browed Treecreeper at Yarrara Reserve, as expected.
We then went up to Ned's Corner for the last night and looked hard for Inland
Dotterels on the road at night. We found one. Ned's Corner has some good
birds,
including a little flock of Apostlebirds around the homestead. These are
pretty uncommon in Victoria now.
We rounded out the trip by heading down to Raak Plain. On the way, we
found one Striped Honeyeater in the trees around Lake Cullulleraine and a pair
of Spotted Harriers along the highway to Mildura. We saw Rufous Fieldwren on
the Plain, but no Orange Chats.
There seemed to be lots of Chestnut Quailthrush, Shy Heathwrens, Crested
Bellbirds and Southern Scrub-robins in the mallee and Hooded Robins seemed
reasonably common. Overall, our observation was that there were
good numbers of ground birds around, but low numbers of tree birds. For
example, there were few honeyeater species and the common ones, like
Yellow-plumed, were in low numbers. We didn't see any White-browed or
Masked Woodswallows. It seems to me that the on-going drought(s) in
Victoria have taken a large toll and the flower-dependent species are
still significantly affected.
We only saw one group of three Regent Parrots and no Major Mitchell Cockatoos.
I think the latter, particularly, are
in real trouble in Victoria as we have not seen any in the last couple of
years in our trips to the Mallee.
We also couldn't find any Spotted Nightjars, although we went spotlighting
on two nights, or any Black-eared Miners, but you still need a fair bit of
luck to see these in Victoria. I was also hoping to see some
Scarlet-chested Parrots in the Sunset but, as usual, they weren't
co-operative at all.
Regards
Chris
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