Kangaroo Island Trip report My girlfriend Simone and I recently spend a week on Kangaroo Island from the 26th of December to the 2nd of January on Kangaroo Island. We had wanted to visit for a while and were looking for a good place to relax after a hard year of work. The fact that there were a few birds I wanted to see there of course did not come into it. I would like to start by thanking those who responded to my RFI, particularly Steve Potter and Tim Dolby. I would also like to thank those who have written trip reports that have gone before, such a very good resource at one’s fingertips.
We drove from Barwon Downs early on Boxing Day and ended up at Cape Jervis around 4:00 pm for the 6 pm ferry. Not much of note on the trip there and the best pre-KI bird was a Peregrine Falcon that repeatedly tried to get the jump on the Rock Doves roosting in the harbour at Cape Jervis while we waited for the ferry. Alas it was unsuccessful. I also had the misfortune of listening to the cricket the whole way….. 98 all out…. Enough said. I was firing myself up for the ferry crossing hoping for something interesting but the best I could do was a couple of West End cans….
We spent 7 nights on KI, the first in the Ozone Hotel in Kingscote and the remaining 6 camping at West Kangaroo Island Caravan Park. The hotel was adequate, if expensive and the caravan park cheap and a great place for what I call tourist wildlife watching – piles of wallabies, kangaroos and koalas with plenty of other large visible species like geese, galahs and rosellas. The nights were particularly raucous and amusing with the Stone-curlews starting straight after dark followed by snorting kangaroos, bugling koalas and shrieking Barn owls…. The reactions from the German tourists the next morning after hearing that racket then finding their food stocks pillaged by possums and wallabies was priceless. Probably my only complaint about that caravan park was the toilet facilities when the park is full…. I don’t mind waiting for a shower but a 10 person queue for unisex toilets is a little bit much, particularly after a few beers or more.
I had three main targets on KI, namely Western Whipbird, Glossy Black-cockatoo and Rock Parrot and I am somewhat embarrassed to admit that we saw all three very well on our first attempt. Following a very good lead we went on the first morning to American River to the area just above the abandoned motel at the end of town and straight away saw a very amorous pair of Glossy Black-cockatoos… We watched them for about a half hour during which time we got a very good insight into the sex life of a male glossy black…. It would appear that quantity certainly wins over quality. Apparently bobbing your head and a quick kiss also counts as foreplay. We also found a second pair quietly feeding in she-oak in town so it is well worth a look around when going there. Two further visits to AR came up negative. After swimming at Stokes Bay one afternoon we stopped at the car park at Lathami CP and I could hear them calling down the ravine. Being mid 30’s and the fact I was slightly knackered I did not bother to go chasing them.
Western Whipbird we both got up at 5 am and headed to Cape de Couedic, Simone is not a serious birder and this would be her only early morning rise for birds…. As soon as we parked the car in the car park near the cottages I could hear whipbirds calling, the first couple were out in the scrub but one was near the road right on the Weir Cove turnoff… I tiptoed up and then pished and was immediately rewarded with the bird jumping up and scolding me. A little game followed of pishing, hiding and scolding which gave Simone time to sneak up and also get excellent views of the bird. It then decided to run across the road and continue to watch us from the other side. Later that morning I saw another bird singing from the top of a branch. I went back to CdC another 4 times and each time got great views of different birds in various places including the Sewer Track and behind the Weir Cove ruins. I did try tape playback at various times but got rather ambivalent results… clearly Christmas is a good time to visit and pishing was always the key. Judging by where they were calling in relation to other birds I judge I got sightings of around 8 individual birds. In addition to the birds at CdC and Weir Cove, I also heard Western Whipbird in a number of places on the entrance road to Seal Bay and to Remarkable Rocks but could not rustle up a sighting. Perhaps the most significant hearing was about 500 meters from the Turnaround number 6 on the road to CdC which was clearly in regrowth habitat following the bushfires. I would certainly recommend a visit to CdC and Remarkable Rocks as early as you can because once we saw the whipbird we still had the place to ourselves for a good couple of hours before the underwhelming tourist hordes arrived.
Rock Parrot was my final main target and we ended up seeing it on the road to the Remarkable Rocks on the morning after seeing the first Western Whipbird. A flock of four birds were feeding in a small gully just before the carpark. When getting out of the car another bird was flying high overhead calling. Another flock was seen at the back of Weir Cove ruins later in the week when following down another calling whipbird.
At this stage I would like to add an honourable mention to the Hooded Plover. It was fantastic to see this bird at almost every open water beach on the island, sometimes in quite good numbers. This is despite the ridiculous fetish that the average South Australian on KI seems to have for letting their dog run unleashed and for driving their 4wd onto the beach and then parking to fish. Apparently it is quite important to drive that extra 100 meters from the carpark onto the beach and definitely added to the number of undersized whiting they had in their buckets. My kingdom for a fisheries officer with any kind of balls.
As I had seen my targets in the first real attempts at looking I was actually able to spend the rest of the trip relaxing and being a tourist (albeit one who had a binocular growth and a strangely weird neck angle) I still managed to spend a lot of time birdwatching and probably the only bird I spent any time looking for and didn’t see was the local race of the Shy Heathwren. I spent quite a few hours in largely regrowth areas of FCNP looking for this but never got more than a possible distant call. The burnt habitat still looks largely a couple of years off again good habitat for this bird. Regrowth following the recent fires seems to be progressing well but certainly has a sameness about it considering such a large percentage of FCNP was burnt.
Kangaroo Island is surprisingly large and we ended up driving over 2000 km for the week on the island itself….. petrol is upto $1.70 in some parts of the island. I think it was fair to say we gave the tourist side a real bashing. Amongst the dross I would heartily recommend buying a KI park’s pass… at $61 per adult we got really good value from this, at least one visit to Seal Bay and doing the beach tour, swimming at Stoke’s Bay and any other northern beach you can find quiet. Probably the only thing I wanted to do and missed was the Hanson Bay walk from the caves. I spent a considerable time seawatching and got bugger all…
As a final point I will add before moving into the annotated list that I find so useful in trip reports I will have to comment on the amount of roadkill on KI. There is a SERIOUS LACK of signs on KI warning tourists to be careful of wildlife… you get one as you leave the ferry and maybe another one when you enter Flinders Chase NP 100+ km later. It is a pretty sad indictment that it was 18 roadkilled goannas until I saw my first live one…. And I had lost count of how many roadkilled snakes until I had to shuffle my first live suicidal snake off the road. ============================== 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
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