Hix Goes Round the Edges

[Hix]

Day 24, Wednesday 24th August 2022
Barham, NSW to Wangaratta, Victoria

Up at a more decent hour this morning and left Barham at 9:00am, getting to Lashbrook Rd about 20 minutes later. I had slowed down a few kilometres back and looked carefully on both sides of the Barham-Moama Rd up to Lashbrook Rd without seeing any Ostrich. I kept going for another couple of kilometres and then turned back westward again. When I reached Lashbrook Rd I turned into it, heading northward. And after about 500 metres I saw it.

A big black male Ostrich, contrasting nicely in a sea of brilliant yellow canola flowers!

When the car stopped the bird turned his back on me and sedately walked away, further into the canola field, but I was able to get a couple of photos. Needless to say, I was very happy! Not a lot of people know about the ostrichs here, and that includes a lot of birders, so I’ve been answering a lot of questions about it since. And I’ve also learnt there are some in remote parts of South Australia too, but I’m satisfied with this one.

Back on the main road I drove to Glenrowan in Victoria, arriving in the afternoon. According to reports Glenrowan Tourist Park is the best place in Australia to see Turquoise Parrots (also known as Turquoisine Parrots, or Turks for short). The place has lots of them – except in July/August. However, I had thought I would give it a try anyway (as it was toward the end of August).

The park had no available accommodation, but Kylie – one of the owners – told me I was welcome to wander around and see if I got lucky. The park is positioned at the bottom of a hillside and the property extends up the hill which is covered in an open woodland habitat. There was a mob of Eastern Grey Kangaroos but the only birds were Superb Fairy Wrens, Red-browed Finches and a Magpie. So after half-an-hour or so I left for Wangaratta where I was going to be staying the night, and Kylie told me I was welcome to return the next morning to try again.

Number of birds seen today: 14 species
Additions to my year list: 1 species – guess which!



Hix

 

[Hix]

Day 25, Thursday 25th August 2022
Wangaratta, Victoria to Wagga Wagga, NSW

Up early again to drive south to Glenrowan Tourist Park again, about 20 kms from Wangaratta. Spent another hour there and saw, along with those birds from yesterday, European Blackbird, House Sparrows, Striated Thornbills, four Crimson Rosellas (two of the Crimson variety and two of the Yellow), Australian King Parrots, a couple of Sulphur-crested Cockatoos and New Holland Honeyeaters. But no Turquoisines. I told Kylie it would be a good excuse for me to come back again. Interestingly, while we were chatting about birds in general and bird movements Kylie mentioned that she had received an email from a friend in Corowa who had seen Magpie Geese the day before at the Corowa Treatment Works.

So I drove back to Wangaratta and on to Albury on the NSW border. My plan was to visit the Wonga Wetlands but the Murray River had risen so much that 90% of the reserve was closed and underwater. I wandered around the small part that was open for around half an hour or so, seeing the usual common species (Superb Blue Wren, Willie Wagtail, Red-browed Finch, Magpie, Magpie-Lark and Pied Currawong) and then decided I had time to drive the 60 kilometres or so to Corowa to see the Magpie Geese.

Unfortunately, they must have left because they weren’t there, just a Pelican, a couple of Black Swans, some Welcome Swallows and a small flock of Zebra Finches, so after 20 minutes I turned around and drove back to Albury. On the way, just outside of a small town called Howlong, I saw on a powerline a dark coloured raptor. Thinking it to be a Black Falcon I stopped the car and took some photos before it flew off. The sun was behind it (meaning the side of the bird I saw was in shadow) and after looking at the photos later when I could scrutinise the details more closely I realised it was actually a Brown Falcon. Disappointed, as Black Falcon would have been a lifer.

In Albury I turned northwards towards Wagga Wagga via a small town called The Rock. The town is called The Rock because behind the town, rising abruptly from the flat farmland surrounding it, is a large granite outcropping also called ‘The Rock’. And it’s a state reserve. There are hiking trails to the top of the Rock and through the reserve, and during the breeding season Peregrine Falcons nest on the cliff faces. During this time rock-climbing on the cliffs is prohibited.

I arrived late in the afternoon and went on a hike up to the Towers, a favoured location for Peregrines, and although I could hear them calling for a brief moment, I didn’t catch sight of them. Apart from a Grey Fantail, a Speckled Warbler and some Buff-rumped Thornbills, the only other thing I saw was a Swamp Wallaby.

I drove onwards another 30 kilometres to Wagga Wagga where I was to spend the night.

Number of birds seen today: 43 species
Additions to my year list: 1



Hix

 

[Hix]

Day 26, Friday 26th August 2022
Wagga Wagga to Sydney

I drove back down to the rock in the morning arriving just before 9:00am, to see if I could find the Peregrines again. I had hoped to be here about 7:30 or 8:00, but I was delayed leaving my hotel. My final destination today is Sydney, and I needed to be there well before the shops closed, and I had a good four hours drive ahead of me so my time here was limited. Because of yesterday I now knew the route to the Towers and I thought I’d be here for only 30 minutes, an hour at the most. I ended up staying for two hours; but it was a very productive couple of hours.

The Grey Fantails were back, along with another Swamp Wallaby and a Grey Kangaroo. There were Yellow Thornbills and Choughs this time and, up near the Towers, I caught sight of a pair of Peregrine Falcons! They weren’t on the cliff, but perched in a tree. While photographing them I became aware of some robins foraging around in the vegetation – Red-capped Robins and Scarlet Robins, a few males and several females. One female looked different to the other two and while I was pondering it a male Flame Robin appeared – I was very excited as the Flame Robin was a Lifer!

Only seven bird species, but very happy with two of them, I went back down the path to my car and started the long drive to Sydney, arriving at around 3:00pm. After dropping off some essentials at home I drove to the place where I had purchased the rooftop tent.

My intention was never to return home at this point, but to drive from Wagga Wagga to my brother’s farm at Jerangle where I would remove the rooftop tent and store it in one of his sheds (as there was nowhere to store it at my home) and get it the next time I wanted to go camping. And that way my brother could use it if he and his wife wanted to go away themselves.

But I changed my itinerary to return to Sydney because I had detected a slight fault in my tent – some holes that should have been drilled in the base had not been drilled, only scratch marks indicating where they should be – and I wanted this fixed beforehand; no point taking it back in 12 month’s time asking for repairs. When I got to the store I showed the sales people (who remembered me well) and they were very apologetic and said they would rectify that immediately. These holes had to be drilled at a 45º angle, some pointing left and others pointing right. The staff member came out with me to do the drilling when we found a couple of holes had been drilled already, but they were pointing in the wrong direction. After a brief discussion amongst themselves I was told that the issue could not be rectified and they would happily replace the tent, if I could come back tomorrow because they would need to have the tent sent from a warehouse and prepared.

I said OK, and then had a thought and asked “Could I just get my money back instead?”, expecting to be told that they could either replace it or give me store credit to the same value of the tent, but refunds were not part of their policy. However, they asked me if my experience with the tent had really been that bad, and I told them I really enjoyed the tent and was very happy with it (apart from the holes that weren’t there), but my back did not like it and that was my main issue. Their response was immediate – one of the sales team said his brother has a bad back, and I need to look after mine too. Two minutes later the money had been transferred back into my account and they took the tent off my car (and off my hands).

By now it was close to 5:00pm on a Friday, so I quickly did a bit of shopping and went home. No point in driving down to the farm now as the weekend traffic out of Sydney would be very heavy and add an hour or more to what is normally a three-and-a-half hour trip. So I did some shopping, went home and packed some fresh clothes, then repacked the car for the next four days. It had been a long day and I fell asleep earlier than I planned.

Number of birds seen today: 7 species
Additions to my year list: 2
Lifers: 1



Hix

 

[Hix]

Day 27, Saturday 27th August 2022
Sydney to Jerangle

So after a bit of a sleep-in I realised I still had a few things I wanted to do (like more shopping, collect my mail etc), so intended to leave at 12:00 midday for my brother's farm, about 3½ hours drive south. As it was, I didn’t get away until 1:45pm. Along the way I didn’t do any birding, although I did notice that with all the rain Lake George (just outside of Canberra) has more water in it than I’ve ever seen before and driving past I saw three Pelicans, around forty Black Swans and hundreds of ducks that were too far away for me to identify.


I eventually arrived at the farm at 5:15pm, just as it was getting dark. Later I went out spotlighting for owls, tawny frogmouths, wombats, kangaroos, wallabies and possums but didn’t find any. It was pretty cold so I didn’t stay out too long. Tomorrow should be better.



Hix

 

[Hix]

Day 28, Sunday 28th August 2022
Jerangle

Had a sleep in and after a quick breakfast went out birding on a path I regularly take across the property. My brother’s farm is a 200 acre bush block, only about 10 acres have been cleared. It’s quite hilly and the path I usually take encompasses a variety of habitats. In 2020 when half of New South Wales was burning due to widespread bushfires part of a large blaze raced through most of the property, thankfully missing the cleared area surrounding the farmhouse. Since then I’ve been following a set path that covers both burnt and unburnt areas. The regrowth in the burnt areas has been rapid – eucalypts that were scorched and leafless have sprouted new shoots from the roots and the epicormic buds under the bark on the trunk have erupted giving the trees a fuzzy look. And acacias and new eucalypts have just sprung up everywhere. The acacias in particular, as they are fast growing trees. Even the pines that were badly burnt seem to be recovering.

It was overcast and quite cool, although the sun did make a few brief appearances and I got rather hot walking up the main hill. There weren’t a lot of birds to be seen until I reached the top and started heading along the ridgetop. This is the beginning of the burnt area where the vegetation, due to the regrowth, was denser than the unburnt area. But the unburnt part appeared to have a greater diversity of plants.

Superb Blue Wrens, Striated and Yellow-rumped Thornbills, Crimson Rosellas and Red-browed Finches were the commonest birds I saw, but also a few Scarlet Robins, Golden Whistlers and Yellow-faced Honeyeaters. Half-way along the ridgetop I heard some loud movements in the vegetation off to one side and I stopped moving as it was obviously something large – I thought maybe a small mob of Kangaroos or wallabies, or even a deer. And as I watched, about a dozen sheep – desperate for a shearing – walked onto the ridgetop path, took one look at me, froze, and after a brief pause, bolted across the path and down the hill on the other side of the ridge.

Two other bird species worth mentioning – four White-throated Treecreepers, two of which were regularly popping in and out of a hole in a tree branch (presumably getting a nest ready for the spring) and a Common Bronzewing, which is now the 64th species of bird I’ve seen on the farm.

It was about three hours later when I returned to the farmhouse for lunch. I mentioned to my brother that I noted he has sheep again, and they badly need shearing. He said he didn’t have any sheep and asked for details, and then got on the phone. Apparently the sheep went missing from a neighbour’s property a few kilometres down the road 9 or 10 months previously and hadn’t been seen since.

The afternoon was not looking good weather-wise and so I thought I’d catch up on some sleep.

Number of birds seen today: 23 species
Additions to my year list: 1



Hix

 

[Hix]

Day 29, Monday 29th August 2022
Jerangle to Narooma

Up early the following morning and spent half an hour packing the car and alternately birdwatching in the garden seeing the usual stuff – a couple of King Parrots and Superb Wrens, Yellow-rumped Thornbills, Yellow-faced Honeyeaters, Grey Shrike-thrushes and an Eastern Spinebill. Also heard a Kookaburra in the distance and a Magpie down by the dam.



Left the farm around 9:00 heading for the coast via Cooma. Slow driving for the first hour or so because of heavy fog but it lifted and vanished after Cooma. Unfortunately, it revealed a rather overcast day. I stopped around 10:30 at a bakery in the little town called Nimmatabel for a sausage roll, and ate it at nearby Lake Williams. I’d been here once before eight years previously for ten minutes and had seen half a dozen common waterbird species, and thought it worthwhile to stop here again. And in the 30 minutes I stayed this time I saw double that number of birds including a very vocal Australian Reed Warbler, a family of Crimson Rosellas, and I heard a Little Grassbird calling from within the reeds, but didn’t catch sight of it. Plus the usual Black Ducks, Moorhens, Coot and Grebes.

Continuing on through the mountains I finally reached the coast and Narooma at around 1:00pm. As I was a bit early for the hotel I visited a place called Handkerchief Beach looking for Hooded Plovers, but didn’t see any (they’d been reported from there on eBird a few days previously).

So I went back to town and drove around a bit until I could check into my hotel and then headed back out towards the inlet and a breakwater known as Seal Rocks (not to be confused with the small coastal township of Seal Rocks much further north). The breakwater is alongside the entrance to Wagonga Inlet and, built of large boulders, is a popular resting place for the Australian and New Zealand Fur Seals that live around here and on the nearby Montague Island about 7 kilometres offshore.

The photo above shows the clear difference in snout shape between an Australian Fur Seal (left) and a New Zealand Fur Seal (right).​

There is a carpark on top of the cliffs, with some good views on the rocks and reef-flats below, with a staircase that will lead you down to the breakwater. From above I saw below me on the reef-flat some Great Cormorants sunning themselves on a rock and an Eastern Reef Egret hunting in the rockpools. The egret I was pleased with because although they have been found much further south, this species tends to be seen more commonly much further north. Going down the stairs I passed by a local tourist attraction, Australia Rock, a big boulder with a hole in the middle so large an adult can stand in it, so named because the hole sort of resembles a map of Australia if you squint. I’m guessing being drunk would help too.

I only saw five other species of birds here – feral pigeons, Silver Gulls, Crested Terns, a Little Pied Cormorant, and a White-bellied Sea-eagle that flew by. But my attention was focussed on the seals; although I didn’t bother to count there was probably two dozen of them on the rocks or in the water. I spent an hour before the rain came and then I hurried back to my hotel for the evening, ducking down the road at dusk to have dinner in a Chinese restaurant.





Number of birds seen today: 26 species
Additions to my year list: 1



Hix

 

[Hix]

Day 30, Tuesday 30th August 2022
Narooma to Sydney

The last day of my travels. I was up early and left the hotel at 7:45am, driving back to Handkerchief Beach to try for the Hooded Plovers again, without success. Nothing there, not even a seagull.

So I headed North. It had rained overnight and was still overcast, and it looked like it might rain again.

Another place supposedly reliable for Hooded Plovers is Racecourse Beach at Ulladulla a little over 100 kms away. I arrived there around 10:00 and parked in the little carpark on the clifftop overlooking the beach. Descending the stairs I found the beach stretched away to the right, and to my left was a rock-flat that seemed to extend up to the next beach some distance away. I chose to investigate the rock-flat first because I’ve noticed they often have a lot of shorebirds (like stints, turnstones and tattlers) poking around in the rock pools for snails, crabs and small fish, whereas the beaches usually are good for Red-capped Plovers, gulls and terns. And the few times I’ve seen Hooded Plovers on Kangaroo Island they were on a rocky beach, not a sandy one. Also, I looked along the beach with my binoculars and couldn’t see any birds.

The first thing I saw were a pair of Sooty Oystercatchers. I quite like the Sootys with their completely black plumage, contrasting with a brilliant orangey-red bill, a red eye and an orange periophthalmic ring surrounding the eye. They’d already finished foraging for the morning and were standing sedately on one leg near the edge of the platform, and I ended up seeing another five further along the platform, some of which were also resting.

And then I saw not two, but four Hooded Plovers – three adults and a juvenile. They were more shy than the Oystercatchers (understandable as they are much smaller) but I managed to get a few photos from a distance. I stayed with them for about ten minutes, and discovered there was also a Double-banded Plover and four Red-capped Plovers on the platform too.

On the way back the first pair of Oystercatchers were foraging again, and I noticed at the base of the cliff some Welcome Swallows were collecting mud for their nests. And, surprisingly for this environment, I heard an Eastern Whipbird calling.

After thirty minutes I climbed back up the stairs to the carpark and before leaving I’d photographed a male Superb Fairy Wren and a female House Sparrow.

An hour later I arrived at Lake Wollumboola (just north of Jervis Bay), a lake that is normally separated from the ocean by a sand dune, but I discovered that since I was last here the weather had removed the sand dune and the lake was draining into the ocean through a channel in the sand. Because of this I couldn’t venture around the lake like I usually do, confined to just one side. And most of the birds seemed to be aware of this and were over the other side of the channel on the lake shore or sandbars away from the human visitors. Still, through my binoculars I counted eight Caspian Terns, six Silver Gulls, 21 Great Cormorants and 71 Crested Tern.

Next stop was the boat ramp on the northern side of the lake, a muddy area with limited viewing when the water in the lake is high – but all I saw was about 100 Black Swans.

One last stop was at Shoalhaven Heads Inlet, where the Shoalhaven River empties into the Pacific Ocean. I hadn’t been here for a while but it was a little more productive bird wise with 33 Eastern Curlew, Australian Pied Oystercatchers, Red-capped Plover, Darters, Pelicans and a pair of Common Terns. In the carpark were more Superb Fairywrens, New Holland Honeyeaters, Little Wattlebirds, Brown Thornbills, Red-browed Finches and a couple of Australian Ravens.

By now it was 2:30pm, and although the sun had come out, I decided to head for home – another 2 and a half hours away – eventually arriving at 5:00pm.

Number of birds seen today: 34 species
Additions to my year list: 2

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~​

And here my journey ends. For those of you interested in stats here are some figures:

Trip Length: 30 days (1st August to 30th August)

Total Bird species seen: 203 species
New Bird species for the year: 61 species
Bird Lifers: 5 species - Australian Logrunner, Red-backed Kingfisher, Eyrean Grasswren, Chirruping Wedgebill, Flame Robin

Total Mammal species: 11 species
Mammal Lifers: 2 species - Red-necked Pademelon, Whiptail Wallaby

Total Reptile Species: 5 species

Distance travelled: 8,667km (5,385 miles) in four States (NSW, QLD, SA, Vic).
Total Fuel costs: $1,804.13
Most expensive fuel (diesel): Innamincka - $2.76 a litre (around $10.45 a gallon)




Hix

 

[boof]

I've been away for a few weeks so I havent been on zoochat.
I really enjoyed reading this Hix. You got some awesome birds.
I was standing on the exact same sand dune in South Australia on the 23/3/2023. Maybe I was looking at one of the birds you found.
Very jealous of the ostrich.

 

[Hix]

I was standing on the exact same sand dune in South Australia on the 23/3/2023. Maybe I was looking at one of the birds you found.

It's a bit of a drive to get there, isn't it? And when I got back I found someone had photographed them a few days later in Sturt near the Pig-footed Bandicoot!

Glad you enjoyed the read, and yes, I was stoked with the Ostrich!



Hix

 

[boof]

It's a bit of a drive to get there, isn't it? And when I got back I found someone had photographed them a few days later in Sturt near the Pig-footed Bandicoot!

Glad you enjoyed the read, and yes, I was stoked with the Ostrich!



Hix

Where's the pig-footed bandicoot? Is that at Cameron's corner? I might need to head back out. I got into Narriarra N.P but not up where the grey grasswrens are seen. The road and camp site up that way wasn't opened. I think I will try for both grasswrens in NSW.

 

[Hix]

It's a big sculpture near Cameron's Corner in Sturt, a few kms inside NSW from the Corner.

 

[steveroberts]

@Hix

Hix those photos and the blog are so great, fantastic photos, the Ostrich ones especially blow me away

 

[Hix]

Glad you enjoyed it Steve. I hope it provides a roadmap for some people who may want to do a similar journey, or maybe just some stages.



Hix