Ben Cruachan – natural history

My birding mate Peter organises a small group of birders from his home district, and yesterday I tagged along. Our first stop was the Swallow Lagoon Reserve, where I left the others for a short time to check out some wildflowers. When I returned and caught up I could see that they were on to something good, it turned out to be a Crested Shrike Tit, a great sighting and one that we’d been hoping to record there, another addition to the list.

While we were watching it working through the canopy, we became aware of an unusual number of Rufous Whistlers around us, they were mostly males, singing, displaying, and competing for territory, quite a sight. We left them to it, and drove on to the Sticky Everlastings that I mentioned in a previous blog, they were fully open and a great show, as were the Bulbine Lilies along the eastern boundary.
Next on the agenda was the Den of Nargun, we could hear the familiar machine gun rattle of Lewin’s Honeyeaters as we neared the bottom of the rocky descent, but only managed fleeting glimpses. We did have very good views of a White-browed Scrubwren collecting food, and when its beak was loaded to capacity it flew upstream, arrow-straight, towards its nest. We were to see it again a little later, under less happy circumstances. There’s a spot close to the Den where years ago we used to regularly see a lyrebird’s nest, we were almost there when sharp eyes spotted a lyrebird climbing from branch to branch in a tree off the track, I wonder what it is they like about that particular location. When we reached the Den we saw our first Rose Robin, it was feeding a young bird, and we had good views as it moved about. This is the best picture I managed, the light was dim under the overhanging canopy and the camera had its usual trouble focusing, but it’ll have to do until I get a better shot of this gorgeous little bird.

Now for the bad news, on our way back downstream, John saw a murdering Pied Currawong raid the scrubwren’s nest and make off with a nestling, leaving the nest in disarray, not happy, currawong.
Further downstream we had another male Rose Robin, and at Deadcock Creek the female was still sitting on the nest we found on our previous trip, if the eggs haven’t hatched they must be getting close by now. The climb out of the gorge is a long drag upwards in the sun, John was leading and suddenly he put an arm out with a warning, just off the track was a quite magnificent Eastern Brown Snake that had been sunning itself. It was a light coloured individual, probably over 1.5 metres long, and fat. My reference book describes the species as growing to 2.2 metres, usually slender, but sometimes moderately robust, that was certainly the case with this character. The brown is one of our most dangerous snakes, highly venomous and not to be trifled with, luckily it wasn’t aggressive, and just wanted to slide uphill away from us. At one point it turned its head to check us out with its deeply socketed eyes, I was quite happy to take a shot of it through the long lens and let it go in peace, a serious reptile!

I don’t know about the others, but I was showing the whites of my eyes for the rest of the climb, but we reached the top without further incident for a late lunch at the vehicles.
Our last stop for the day was at the railway reserve to see the wildflowers, the Purple Doubletail Orchids were simply outstanding, we also found some beautiful Tiger Orchids, and the Showy Podolepis were still putting on a great display. Interestingly, many of the latter had numbers of native bees feeding on either pollen or nectar.

Leaving the others to return home on the main road, I pushed on in the 4wd to negotiate the sandy track through the flora and fauna reserve, one stop gave me a nice colony of Caladenia carnea, and halfway through the reserve I had another good sighting, a Painted Button Quail crossed the track in front of me, a nice finish to a great day out.