Sue Lashko joined Jenny Bounds and me on our regular survey looking for these two threatened species to the NW of Canberra.
We spent most of the morning at Spring Forest south of Cowra. While there was virtually no flowering, there was some good birding nevertheless on an almost perfect winter day's weather. The highlight was 6 male Flame Robins together within the same binocular view, with surprisingly several Eastern Yellow Robins joining them pouncing on their prey from stalks well out of cover. There were also good numbers of Diamond Firetail, Dusky Woodswallow, Jacky Winter and White-browed Babblers. A couple of Superb Parrots and a single bird over later was a real surprise, as they're usually absent from this area over winter.
We moved on to Jindalee for the afternoon, seeing both Grey-crowned Babbler and Apostlebird on the way, NE of Koorawatha. There was substantially more flowering of the ironbarks at Jindalee, with lots of noisy honeyeaters calling each time we stopped for a look/listen. Highlights were a single Blue-faced Honeyeater, lots of Noisy Friarbird (again less than 2 hours drive from Canberra) with Little Friarbird joining them at one spot, and an overwintering Olive-backed Oriole surprisingly calling and feeding amongst the flowers.
The final species for the day was a cuckoo-shrike feeding by belly flopping into the tops of the wattles, and then often sitting obligingly on a perch only 10 m away to consume its catch. After consulting the books we concluded it was a dark morph of the White-bellied Cuckoo-shrike from its relatively small size, dark grey crown with only a very narrow band of black over the bill. In my experience this morph is very variable and poses difficulty in identifying. Unfortunately it did not call, its most diagnostic feature, in the 10 minutes or so that we observed it before heading home.
All in all a very enjoyable day’s birding even though we did not see or hear either of the species we were looking for. However, there was an unconfirmed sighting of a Regent Honeyeater near Koorawatha shortly after. COG has participated in these surveys as part of a formal outing over the past two years, so why not get a few friends together next year? Debbie Saunders will be only too pleased to suggest where to look.
Jack Holland