I spent last Saturday to Monday birding at Round Hill and Lake Cargelligo. The weather was dry, sunny and cool. There doesn’t appear to have been rain for some time, and the countryside is quite dry. In general, birds were plentiful until 9 am, after which they became increasingly hard to find.
At Whoey Tank, the highlight was probably the 8 mulga parrots feeding on green ground cover. In addition, a malleefowl was heard calling several times, and eventually briefly seen. Other notables included southern whiteface, mistletoebird and mallee ringneck. Gilbert’s whistler was seen twice in the wheat paddock, but did not call. A male was calling at length beside railway line. I saw 2 crested bellbirds, neither of whom gave their chiming call at any time. However, a third gave a loud, extended, cackling call, which is new to me – I guess it is their alarm call. Other notables in the wheat paddock included weebill, shy heathwren, and non-breeding splendid fairy-wren. All the thornbills were sighted within the Nature Reserves: chestnut-rumped, buff-rumped, yellow-rumped, inland, and yellow. There was no sign of red-lored whistler, no raptors, and no cuckoos.
A small drainage pond at the Round Hill level crossing was full of water. Here, we sat in our vehicle for 45 minutes and got great views as a stream of birds came in to drink, including both grey-fronted and yellow-plumed honeyeater, white-fronted, striped, spiny-cheeked, brown-headed, and white-eared honeyeater, more mulga parrots, and silvereye. Common bronzewing came, but didn’t drink.
Chat Alley was as dry as a bone. A fairy-wren was heard, but not seen.
Three visits to the Lake Cargelligo Sewerage Treatment Works yielded a breeding pair of Australasian shoveler, many hoary-headed grebe, 3 Australian shelduck, and (unusually) 6 darters, but no freckled duck. Another unusual sighting was the 6 pairs of pied honeyeater that were roosting in low prickly bushes in an adjacent paddock at 5 pm. When I got to within about 5 m , they flew up into a large tree beside one of the ponds. Some were still present in the saltbush on the next morning, and had been joined by double-barred finches. There were no crakes . The waterfowl all seemed to be much more flighty than usual, and I did wonder if there were any gun-shy refugees from Victoria.
Carl Weber
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