Category: Birds

Wattlebirds

Soon after my visit to Southern states in December 2017 I wrote about “honeyeaters and their next-nearest kin, mainly because I have … seen species which don’t live around Townsville” and I’m doing it again now.

Wattlebirds are the Southern equivalent of our Friarbirds: big, noisy, gregarious (and often aggressive) honeyeaters. The Red and Yellow are the largest of five species at 38-48 and 31-39cm respectively; the Yellow (Anthocaera paradoxa) is restricted to Tasmania but the Red (A. carunculata) occupies a broad coastal arc from Shark Bay in the West to Brisbane.

wattledird on bottlebrush
Yellow Wattlebird in a South Hobart garden

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Myrniong: landscape and birds

One of the locations I visited in my recent trip to Victoria and Tassie was Myrniong, about halfway between Melbourne and Ballarat, not far from Bacchus Marsh. Melbourne’s West is drier than its East, and the Myrniong landscape is not unlike that of Sunbury, with bare hills dissected by deep narrow valleys; Lerderderg Gorge, nearby, is just one of the bigger examples.

The property was an outdoor education centre, much used by school groups, and featured an artificial lake near the campus buildings high on the hill above the river.

Myrniong
Looking down on the Werribee River gorge

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Poplar gum full of birds

Our poplar gum dropped a lot of leaves a month ago in preparation for its flowering, and it has been full of birds ever since. In order from most to least numerous visitation, we’ve enjoyed (mostly!) the company of Rainbow Lorikeets, Blue-faced Honeyeaters, White-gaped Honeyeaters, Little Friarbirds, Leaden Flycatcher, Great Bowerbird, Brown Honeyeater (common in the garden but not in the poplar gum), Blue-winged Kookaburra, Spangled Drongo, Indian Mynah, Sulphur-crested Cockatoo, White-bellied Cuckoo-shrike, Figbird and Torres Strait Pigeon (my first sighting this season).

Amongst them, however, was a Scaly-breasted Lorikeet, Trichoglossus chlorolepidotus, my first record of the species in the garden.

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