Fourteen people in five 4-wheel drive vehicles surveyed nine COG grids for the atlas, in what turned out to be perfect weather - cool, calm and sunny after a change and some rain the day before. We entered the Naas fire trail in Namadgi NP via Caloola Farm, travelling south with each vehicle surveying a COG grid (doing 2-ha searches) before meeting up at Horse Gully Hut for lunch. There had been overnight snow and some was still on the shaded slopes - adding to the enjoyment of the day.
The northern part of the route before entering the national park is grassland and open woodland, Yellow Box and Apple Box; the dominant habitat on the trail in the national park is Apple Box woodland with Broad-leaf Peppermint, and Black Sallee and Snow Gum in the frost hollows and exposed areas.
Bird highlights (of 53 species) were six Hooded Robins and Fuscous Honeyeaters near Caloola Farm, several parties of Crested Shrike-tits, several sightings of Spotted Quail-thrush, a number of groups of White-naped Honeyeaters moving through (the last stragglers on migration), and a party of five Yellow-tailed Black-Cockatoos which had been digging grubs out of tree trunks. The most interesting sighting was a pair of Red-browed Treecreepers in Apple Box woodland on a sheltered ridge in the grid north of Horse Gully Hut (J25) - not a habitat I generally would have expected them in (they prefer the denser, wetter forests where there is Ribbon Gum, although the COG atlas does show them as occurring in low numbers in the Naas Valley). Also interesting was that all three species of treecreeper were recorded in that grid - White-throated and Brown as well as Red-browed. I would be interested to know if anyone has ever recorded all three species of treecreeper in the one spot (within a few hundred metres) in our region before.
After lunch the group went in convoy along the trail to Long Flat (south of Mount Clear camp) to the historical (or hysterical depending on your viewpoint!) 'Long Flat dunny', an outdoor toilet bowl and cistern set on a rise overlooking a frost hollow where we took the mandatory group photo. A few in the party got good views of a pair of Spotted Quail-thrush on the trail.
Thanks to Alistair Bestow for doing the pre-organising, including arranging for the right keys to the locked gates, to David McDonald, my co-leader on the trip, and to those who participated.
Jenny Bounds