RUTHERGLEN AREA JUNE 2018

I've just returned from a most enjoyable couple of days birding around Rutherglen.  It was cold - naturally - and also surprisingly dry, but very productive.  I saw 82 species of birds, not counting the Wedge-tailed Eagle I saw on the way home.  This was the first time I'd been birding since the death of my birding mate, Philip Jackson.  Each time I saw something special, I thought how much PJ would have appreciated it.

Rufous Whistler, photo by Jim O'Toole

I expect winter in Rutherglen to be cold, but Monday morning was very cold - someone said minus 3.  Certainly I haven't seen white frost like that since I was a child.  It crunched underfoot.  The best bird before breakfast was a male Rufous Whistler, who'd forgotten he was supposed to be a summer migrant.  Then, before morning tea, we saw a flock of Diamond Firetails on the road out of Chiltern's No 1 dam.  At Cyanide I had great close views of a pair of Turquoise Parrots, who wanted to make friends rather than fly away.  I saw 57 species of birds (and also heard Whistling Kite and Eastern Yellow Robin) but, notwithstanding the Turquoise Parrots, the day belonged to the beasts.  I saw lots of kangaroos and one wallaby, but also a couple of antechinus (always a thrill) and, most unusually, a koala on the Greenhill Road.  I hoped to add platypus to this list, but I could not.  The nearest I came to another animal, was a huge, just dug wombat hole near Lake Kerford on the Beechworth Forest Drive the following day. 

Gang-gang Cockatoo, photo by Richard Schurmann

On Tuesday, I managed 60 birds, including 25 I had not seen on Monday.  Before breakfast, there was a flock of shovellers on Lake King.  In Beechworth township, a pair of Gang-gangs sat in a street tree.  I visited Woolshed Falls to add Striated Thornbill to my list, and back at Cyanide dam, I saw a Speckled Warbler, one of my very favourite birds.  I was walking along Cyanide Road and I could hear 'chip' contact calls overhead.  It seemed to be three birds in the canopy of three different trees.  I guessed they were Yellow-tufted Honeyeaters, so I spent some time craning my neck in an attempt to identify them.  Finally, I managed to see that one was a Spotted Pardalote, then, after another five minutes, I saw that another was an Eastern Spinebill.  The third bird, was, as expected, a Yellow-tufted Honeyeater.  Were these three different species making a 'chip' contact call to each other?  How very odd.  I wished PJ had been there to discuss it with.