It's been two years since we've been able to visit our daughter and her family in Australia. Since then they've moved house to a property with a large garden, a creek running through the bottom and lots of mature trees nearby. It has the added bonus that its right on the edge of the Mount Pilot National Park which is a hotspot for numerous species including the critically endangered Regents Honeyeater as they've been captive bred and released in the area. A whole new area for me to explore!
Things didn't quite go to plan! Firstly severe weather in the UK meant our flight from Manchester was delayed by over five hours meaning we missed our connecting flight in Doha and consequently spent twenty nine hours stuck in the airport. Covid restrictions in Qatar meant we couldn't leave the airport and flights to Australia are still not back to normal so theres only one per day.
Things got worse as even though I'd phoned Hertz to explain the situation they put us down as a no show so when we finally arrived, absolutely shattered, a day late there was no car for us! Cue a massive argument before they eventually found us a suitable car!
A two and a half hour drive later we finally arrived in Chiltern and collapsed into bed to the sound of crickets and frogs calling from the garden.
It soon became apparent that the water filled creek at the bottom of the garden was a magnet for birds with both White-necked Heron and White-faced Heron being soon whilst the dam on the farmland next door had Little Pied Cormorant, Pacific Black Duck and Maned Duck most mornings.
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| White-faced Heron |
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| White-necked Heron |
The garden was home to a family of Superb Fairy Wrens and I spent ages trying to get some decent photos of the male. They're very quick and spend a lot of the time in thick cover and occasionally showed perching up and singing - generally when I didn't have the camera with me!
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| Female Superb Fairy Wren |
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| Sub-adult male Superb Fairy Wren |
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| Silvereye |
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| Red-browed Finch |
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| Adult White-plumed Honeyeater feeding newly fledged young Most days a Red Wattlebird and a couple of Black-faced Cuckoo Shrikes spent some time in the garden - usually at first light before the grandchildren and dogs were out and about. A strange looking rosella threw me before I realised it was actually one of the colour morphs of Crimson Rosella!
  Unfortunately any plans I had to visit local birding hotspots were curtailed when our ten year old granddaughter tested positive for covid on the Sunday evening before she was due back at school on a Monday. A PCR test on Monday confirmed it so the whole family had to isolate for 7 days. Luckily she didn't get very ill and lateral flow tests proved she was negative by Wednesday but we still had to isolate until we'd taken a lateral flow test on the sixth day. If that was negative we could resume normal life on the seventh day. Two days before we flew home..... We ended up taking a lateral flow test everyday as we had to know the exact day we tested positive (if we did) as it would affect our flights home. Unbelievably no one else in the household caught it! I got into a routine of getting up early and birding' the garden before breakfast and again just before it got dusk. One evening, sitting on the wooden bridge over the creek and listening to the frogs, a rustling in the vegetation caught my attention and after a short while a Buff-breasted Rail dashed across an open space and disappeared. After that I staked the creek out ever ynight with the camera but there was absolutely no sign...... Until...... One afternoon we had a terrific thunderstorm and torrential rain. I'd already had a flock of six White-throated Needletails flying over the garden as the storm rolled in. When the rain eased I glanced out the window into the field alongside the house and saw two Buff-banded Rails feeding on worms right out in the open. I managed to sneak up to the boundary fence and spent twenty minutes watching them before a circling Collared Sparrowhawk caused them to scurry back into the creek. My best views ever of this native rail.        Both birds were juveniles proving breeding in the area and the record has been submitted via the local birders facebook group. Despite the setbacks I ended the week on 38 species for Amy & Jeremys new garden with other notable species including Rufous Whistler, Welcome Swallow, Galah, Sulphur-crested Cockatoo, Sacred Kingfisher, Brown Falcon, Willie Wagtail and Grey Shrike-thrush and Yellow-rumped Thornbill being seen along with the ubiquitous Australian Magpie and Magpie Larks. Unfortunately I didn't get a chance to check out the birding sites in Mount Pilot National park that I'd earmarked in my quest to see a Regents Honeyeater and the closet I got was this mural on the end of the public toilets in the town!  There is hope though as a couple of years ago a pair were seen in a nearby town. See detail here If we hadn't have been in lockdown I was ready to jump on a plane with the pretext of going to see the grandchildren. Hopefully we'll be visiting Australia regularly again in the future so I'm still hopeful I'll see one! As I write this I keep looking at the fabulous drawing I've got of one by Australian Artist Rachel Hollis (see here).  Its one of those birds I really want to see in. |
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