Magic moments of winter bird monitoring
Posted on 8 August, 2015 by Tanya Loos
One of the joys of bird monitoring is the experience of magic moments: special points of time and place that stand out in the mind as truly special. Connecting Country’s winter bird monitoring has been completed for the 2015 year, involving two surveys at each of the 54 sites, which totals 108 ‘twenty minute – two hectare’ surveys. Here are a few of the magic moments from this winter’s wet and windy efforts!
While looking for the typical, tiny bush bird shapes in the foliage on the side of a hill in Metcalfe Conservation Reserve, I was completely taken aback by the sight of a huge Wedge-tailed Eagle taking off from the ground just metres in front of me, closely followed by another, younger bird. They had been eating a dead kangaroo, and the pair perched nearby in a paddock tree watching me closely as I completed the survey.
Speckled Warblers are not often encountered; they are a small, ground-foraging woodland bird somewhat like a scrubwren, with attractive streaky plumage. One lucky afternoon I had brilliant views of two foraging in rocky grassy undergrowth at the Nuggettys, then observed another at a direct seeding site in Maldon, foraging on the ground with thornbills and Scarlet Robins.
This year I have had the fortunate opportunity to set up a number of new bird monitoring sites (eight in total) with landholders who have past or present Connecting Country revegetation projects on their properties. After surveying a direct seeding site in the Blue Hills area, myself and the landholders went for a walk and we were rewarded with a brilliant session; dozens of bird species including Hooded Robins, Jacky Winters, Brown Treecreepers and culminating in a pair of Crested Shrike-tits doing a courtship wing shivering display. Magic!
This striking male Crested Shrike-tit was photographed by Geoff Park, and featured on his blog Natural Newstead.
If you are interested in a revegetation project on your property, call Jarrod Coote at the Connecting Country office on 5472 1594 to find out more.
And for those of you who are enjoying the birds on your property; watch this space, as we will be going out on another outing in early September.
by Tanya Loos, Habitat for Bush Birds Project Coordinator.
Hi Tanya
I too saw a number of Crested Shrike-tits two weeks ago, in the Metcalfe Conservation Reserve, down low in the valley near the creek line. They were peeping to each other and flitting around, just lovely! I have not seen them before, so very exciting.
That’s wonderful, Debbie! And a lucky sighting to see more than one at once for your first time.