Connecting Country gets birdy on Annual Bird Count Weekend

Posted on 11 December, 2014 by Connecting Country

The Annual Bird Count has been a Castlemaine Field Naturalist Club event held on the first weekend in December for some fifteen years, and in the last few years Connecting country staff and members have participated as well. The weekend of the 6 and 7th of December 2014 saw two teams of bird enthusiasts from Connecting Country scouring the Mount Alexander region for our feathered friends. One team was led by myself (Tanya Loos) and Doug Ralph, and we visited the Fryerstown forests on Saturday. Another team was led by Chris Timewell to the Baringhup and Nuggetty area on the Sunday.

Our group had plenty of beginner birdwatchers – great to see you all enjoying yourselves!

Doug is a passionate advocate for the forests of the Fryerstown area, in particular a special patch which is coursed through by Columbine Creek. Here, our group wound our way slowly along the creek for a few hours, admiring the beautiful old trees and the wonderful intact understory. We saw Blue Pincushions in flower! They are all dried up elsewhere in the region.

Bird-wise we faced some tough conditions, with strong winds making bird movement and sounds tricky to pick up. We saw plenty of Musk Lorikeets, and good views of Olive-backed Orioles.

The bird of the day was a Leaden Flycatcher, fluttering and foraging in cassinia shrubs. Leaden Flycatchers are an uncommon visior to the region – for pics and information on this lovely bird, go to the Natural Newstead site (click here).

It’s not all about birds though! We were also delighted to see thriving populations of a blue butterfly known as the Imperial Hairstreak. This butterfly has a special relationship with ants – the ants protect the caterpillar and pupae, in exchange for the sugary exudate from the caterpillars. Jane Mitchell took these lovely photos, and for more on this species see the Castlemaine Field Nats website (click here).

Imperial Hairstreak on a Daphne Heath (left); Imperial Hairstreak on a Wirilda- the pupae and ant activity was observed on this type of wattle (right)

Our group saw 14 species of bird during our foray into one of the hidden gems of the region. Many thanks to Doug for showing us this special and presently unprotected spot. A copy of our completed datasheet – using the Connecting Country Birdwatcher’s Monitoring Kit – can be viewed here.

Chris and his small team made a day of it, and visited five sites including bushland in Baringhup and the Nuggettys, the Loddon River, and Cairn Curran. An impressive sixty-four bird species were recorded (click here to see the completed datasheet). The highlights were a pair of White-backed Swallows on the northern side of Baringhup (a species rarely seen in the region), as well as White-fronted Chats, a Rainbow Bee-eater, three Caspian Terns, Chestnut Teals and a pair of Sacred Kingfishers. Kerrie Jennings captured a wonderful portrait of a Whistling Kite near Cairn Curran.