Too many jobs to get out into the bush, so another from the old blog.
Three days of birding.
The TFN bird surveys at the Bush Family and Frair Reserves are over for another year or two, and I’m sitting here with my legs gently tingling from the myriad of small scratches collected during three days of pushing through scrub in shorts. Memo, buy a pair of gaiters for the next outing. Gouldiae and I arrived early on Friday, and started surveying in the north east corner as requested, and our best birds were a Leaden Flycatcher, and a pair of Scarlet Robins, unusually, flying fast through the tree tops. After two surveys we went back to the access road and did one more before Len arrived, and we then did three more down to the main road. More good birds included Olive-backed Oriole, Noisy Friarbird, Jacky Winter, Dusky Woodswallow, and male Rufous Whistlers competing for mates and territory.
This was just about as good as it got for Gouldiae and me, Len went on to bigger and better things with another crew, but when the C. O. arrived, Gouldiae, myself, and Sue, were allocated sites mainly on the perimeter of the two reserves. This meant we were in Noisy Miner territory, they are aggressive birds which tend to drive off other species, and our site species counts were well down on what some of the others were getting deeper into the reserves. A bright spot late on the first day was a flock of 25 White-fronted Chats at one of the few dams in this dry country.
The next day saw the three of us driving to the southern boundary track, and we had just turned onto it when Gouldiae said to stop and reverse. He’d spotted two Goannas on a dry tree, these large Monitor lizards are fearsome predators of eggs and nestlings, and it was out cameras and over to the tree for photos. Unusually, they didn’t move, even when we were directly underneath them, Sue suggested they were warming up in the early morning sun, they were probably well fed also, the largest had down from a nest sticking to its claws. There is a collection of pictures of them at this gallery.
After lunch we drove across country to the Frair Reserve for 6 surveys on the northern boundary track, where the story was the same, heaps of Noisy Miners and a scarcity of other species. A highlight though, was a wonderful display of Tiger Orchids, Diuris sulphurea, in colonies along the 2 kilometres of track.
At our last survey for the day things changed for the better, Sue found 3 Gang-gang Cockatoos, a Mistletoebird flew over pursued by a Miner, and we ended with the best variety for the afternoon. Another floral highlight on this section of track was a good number of blue Sun Orchids, a Thelymitra species which I am still trying to identify to my satisfaction. (edit, the unspotted form of T ixioides.)
On the final morning we had to repeat the six surveys in Frair, and the results were generally similar to the previous day, the last being the best, with one exception. On the fourth survey I was walking along the edge through fallen timber, looking for a kangaroo track to take me in through the scrub, when the sixth sense kicked in and I looked down to see a very large annoyed Red-bellied Black Snake about five feet in front of my bare legs. Its neck was flattened, giving the head the characteristic threatening triangular appearance, I stepped back quietly and it was happy to slide under a log, leaving me to continue on showing the whites of my eyes.
I told Sue about it, and it led to the only record of a Tawny Frogmouth in the two reserves for the three days. In the next site she was keeping a close eye on the ground, and sighted a patch of whitewash. She looked up and there it was above her, a great sighting. At our last site the Gang-gangs were still feeding in the Eucalypts, and we at last got a look at the Lorikeets that we’d been seeing zipping over from time to time, they were as we suspected, Musk Lorikeets, and we finished our thirtieth and final survey watching them feeding quietly in the top of a Stringybark.
