A two-day twitchathon yielded 90 species, including many southwest endemics.
After an unsuccessful crack at the Hudsonian godwit at Lake Joondalup we spent a morning at the Dryandra woodlands. We encountered Swan River honeyeaters, western thornbills, Australian ringneck parrots, grey currawong and bush stone curlews within sight of our accommodation at Dryandra Village. At the Ochre Track we found rufous tree-creeper, western spinebill, western yellow robin, western rosella, blue-breasted fairywren, dusky woodswallow, golden whistler, white-browed babbler and scarlet robin.
By lunchtime we were on the road to Cheyne’s Beach, picking up short-billed cockatoos and red-capped, arriving at the caravan park after dark. A pre-dawn start outside the cabin soon yielded white-breasted robin, red-winged fairywren, and noisy scrub-bird. Still early in the morning, we saw western bristlebird, red-eared fire-tail, western wattlebird, western spinebill, southern emu-wren, and white-browed scrubwren.
We made lunchtime departure to Mt Trio in the Stirling Range National Park, where we picked up western whipbird (subspecies oberon), western fieldwren, inland thornbill and good numbers of western spinebills and tawny-crowned honeyeaters. The western whipbird was a happy surprise, given the early afternoon timing, providing terrific views.
An afternoon return to Cheyne’s Beach proved very fruitful with views of all three skulkers, including crippling views of a pair of western whipbirds.
After an early twitch on our final day, we began the long drive to Perth, stopping at Mt Barker for views of 20+ long-billed cockatoos. A welcome surprise came in the form of a group of four elegant parrots feeding in a small marsh just beyond the roosting cockatoos. Western rosellas were also present.
Special thanks to Tim Dolby and Frank O’Connor for their extremely valuable help.
Tim Faulkner
Operations Manager
Australian Reptile Park & Devil Ark
P. O. Box 737
Gosford, NSW 2250
Phone: (02) 4340 8614
Mobile: 0415 904 710
===============================
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send the message: unsubscribe (in the body of the message, with no Subject line) to: birding-aus-request@vicnet.net.au
http://birding-aus.org ===============================
