On a mild, overcast Wednesday morning seven of us set out on a leisurely amble through the Stoney Creek Nature Reserve. This reserve is approximately 80 ha with a small parking area and gate located on the Captains Flat Road 4.5km from the Kings Highway. On the advice of a local cogger, Graeme Clifton, we set off on our amble in a vaguely anticlockwise direction. The most obvious bird of the day was the Striated Pardalote. I believe we heard them calling throughout the entire walk. However as bird species were not plentiful we chased up bird calls and admired the beautiful display of bush flowers. Surprisingly an Australian King-Parrot called and sure enough after a 5-10 minutes search we saw the red and green parrot flash through the trees. I had never seen one in the area and Graeme had seen only a few and then only in the spring migration time. Varied Sittellas were sighted as well as Buff-rumped, Yellow and Striated Thornbills. White-throated Treecreepers were plentiful. During the latter part of the walk we saw a good number of Leaden Flycatchers, both male and female, a male Mistletoebird, a Sacred Kingfisher, both Rufous and Golden Whistlers and several Olive-backed Orioles, one of which treated us to a fine mimic chorus. We saw two raptors, a Wedge-tailed Eagle and a Nankeen Kestrel.
There were plenty of nests. In the parking lot we could see two Australian Magpie chicks in the nest and during the walk we had a nest building display by one of the plentiful Noisy Friarbirds. There were unoccupied nests of Wedge-tailed Eagle and possibly a Brown Goshawk.
The bird call skills and persistence of our small group were needed to see the 35 species for the walk. Alex McLachlan kindly shared his knowledge of wild flowers to add colour to the pleasant morning outing.
Julienne Kamprad