Easter birding at Gluepot

Hi all, I thought I’d provide a short report of a full day birding trip to Birds Australia’s Gluepot Reserve in the South Australian Mallee on Saturday, 23 April. We departed Waikerie early in order to get to Gluepot around sunrise. The Reserve is famous for its concentrations of rare and threatened mallee bird species within relatively easy reach and we weren’t disappointed! We saw no less than 4 Red-lored Whistlers: 2 sightings at 2 different places. The first one involved a fully uncoloured individual, a partly coloured singing individual and a fully coloured singing male. The second sighting, some 10 km away from the 1st site, was of a fully coloured, singing male. The ground-dwelling Southern Scrubrobin and Chestnut Quail-thrush were located more than once and Shy Heathwren was heard singing at least 5 sites. Living up to its name, they were difficult to get good views of, but eventually we were rewarded with a photographable bird. We then set off searching for the main reason for Gluepot’s existence: the Black-eared Miner. The species is confined to dense, old-growth mallee scrub while its close relative, the Yellow-throated Miner, favours open country. Human activities such as clearing of mallee scrub has favoured Yellow-throated Miners to the point that both species came into contact with each other and started interbreeding. The more agressive Yellow-throats have now almost hybridised the Black-eared Miners out of existence. After some effort we tracked down a flock of miners, which contained hybrids and at least 4 Black-eared Miners. They gave good views and the observers happily moved on to the next target: Striated Grasswren. Their numbers have crashed during the drought of 2005-10 but following recent good rainfall we’re hopeful that they will start recovering. After trying a few sites we were rewarded with excellent views of a pair in a ‘Wait-a-while’ acacia shrub in a large area of the spikey spinifex grass. The male was singing profusely in plain view while the female kept popping out into the open to forage. Later in the day when things quietened down we tracked down other good species such as Gilbert’s Whistler, White-eared -, Brown-headed and Striped Honeyeater, White-browed Treecreeper, etc. Unfortunately we did not have sufficient time to sit at an active malleefowl mound to wait for the birds to turn up. At this mound a motion-activated camera has revealed some amazing activity including unfortunate fox predation (despite a ‘corridor’ of fox-baits around this very mound!). All day long there were large flocks of White-browed and Masked Woodswallows in the trees, on the ground and (mostly) in the air. On the way back near Waikerie we were fortunate enough to come across some Regent Parrots flying to their night-time roost. A very successful day and some very happy observers returned to their Easter accommodation. Further details and pix here: http://sabirding.wildiaries.com/trips/10563 cheers Peter