birding-aus

Wonthaggi Birding

To: Birding-Aus <>
Subject: Wonthaggi Birding
From: "Albert Vrielink" <>
Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2007 19:48:12 +1000
Hi All,

Yesterday I had a pleasant day birding at the Wonthaggi Heath &
Coastal Reserve. The reserve lies 140k southeast of Melbourne, 25k
east of Philip Island and southeast of the township of Wonthaggi. I
parked the car at the end of Campbell St/Chisholm Rd. My target was to
see 4 species: Hooded Plover, Southern Emuwren, Tawny-crowned Emuwren
and Beautiful Firetail. I was on the beach at 830am and within minutes
I found a couple and their juvenile a few hundred meters south of the
sign 'Emergency beach no 20'. I uploaded a photo on the Eremea
website. The birds flew off once two dogs ran past. From here I
wandered along the tracks and within 15 minutes walking distance from
the carpark I found  party of 4 Southern Emuwrens. Three female-type
birds and one with a white bib. Does anyone know if this is a juvenile
male or their winter plumage? Soon after I found another party. This
time 3 birds with a white bib. Next stop was the fire dam on the track
betwen the carpark and Harmers Haven. This turned out to be an
excellent spot. After lunch I hid in the bush, set up my scope for
digiscoping and saw lots of good birds. Unfortunately, but not really,
2 Beautiful Firetails landed only 5 meters away from me. I wasn't able
to make a photo! A few minutes later a bird dropped in on the other
end of the fire dam and at that moment I had the videocamera on my
tripod.  Spectacular birds! Other species that came in for a drink
were Brush Bronzewing, Yellow-faced, Crescent, White-naped,
White-faced, New Holland Honeyeaters, Little and Red Wattlebirds,
Eastern Spinebill, Red-browed Finch, Brown Thornbill, 1 female Pink
and Yellow Robins. Just awesome to see all these birds close-up. Best
time was after 4pm when it looked like your favourite pub at Fridays
after work. A constant stream. May be I should have stayed till after
dark to see if any pigeons, quails or parrots would drop in but I
still had to drive for almost 2 hours to get home.

Missed out on Tawny-crowned HE but those firetails made my day.

Regards,
Albert Vrielink
===============================
www.birding-aus.org
birding-aus.blogspot.com

To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send the message: unsubscribe (in the body of the message, with no Subject line)
to: 
===============================

<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>
Admin

The University of NSW School of Computer and Engineering takes no responsibility for the contents of this archive. It is purely a compilation of material sent by many people to the birding-aus mailing list. It has not been checked for accuracy nor its content verified in any way. If you wish to get material removed from the archive or have other queries about the archive e-mail Andrew Taylor at this address: andrewt@cse.unsw.EDU.AU