After reading Richard Nowotny’s account of the migrating honeyeaters seen at
Point Addis on the south coast of Victoria, Ruth and I decided to visit and
see for ourselves. I must say that we were not disappointed! I suspect that
the numbers of birds that we were seeing were a little less than reported by
Richard and others in the previous couple of weeks, but a spectacular
experience nonetheless.
>From the point itself, looking back over the scrub we saw many honeyeaters
flitting from bush to bush – most were White-naped and Yellow-faced. Every
so often a large flock, of maybe several hundred birds, would take off and
move further inland. We then drove back inland along the access road to the
carpark at the nature walk (not the Ironbark Discovery Walk) and stopped
there for a while. The trees around the carpark were swarming with
White-naped, Yellow-faced, New Holland and White-eared honeyeaters and many,
many Eastern Spinebills. In addition there were literally hundreds and
hundreds of Silvereyes – all race Lateralis, as best as we could tell. The
birds were certainly too numerous for us to count or even estimate numbers
with any precision. It certainly appeared that the birds were passing
through, though – for a number of minutes we’d see almost nothing but
White-naped then they would start to thin out and we’d see only New Hollands
for a few minutes, after that they might be replaced by Yellow-faced and
then the cycle would start over again. Eastern Spinebills were continuously
present in numbers greater than we’d ever seen at the same time. Also the
Silvereyes were continuously present in large numbers.
>From this location we moved further north to the Discovery Walk in the
Ironbark forest. We saw a small number of Crescent Honeyeaters – certainly
not the large numbers seen by others (I wonder if they have finished
migrating?) We then found a waterhole on the walk and stopped there for
about 45 minutes – during that time there was an endless number of mostly
White-naped Honeyeaters flying in, having a quick bath and a drink and
flying on. At times there would be 30-40 honeyeaters in the (tiny) waterhole
with hundreds in the trees surrounding the waterhole waiting their turn.
This really should be one of those “must-do” experiences for birders, I
think. It is absolutely incredible to see these birds in such numbers – and
to see them in such a continuous stream.
Next year I think we’ll visit a few weeks earlier – maybe from the beginning
of April.
Paul Dodd
Docklands, Melbourne
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