GLOSSY BLACK COCKATOO IN CRANBOURNE!

 If you'd asked me last week where in Victoria to go to see a Glossy Black Cockatoo, I'd have said that you should go to Gipsy Point or Mallacoota.  I'd still say that.  However, last Friday, I saw one at Cranbourne Botanic Gardens, about 400 kilometres west of their accepted range.

Glossy Black Cockatoo, photo by Graham Barwell

On our way home from Toora, basking in our successful Hudsonian Whimbrel twitch, Graham Barwell and I decided on a short birding stopover at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Cranbourne.  These gardens just squeak into the 100 best birdwatching  sites in Australia, coming in at number 98.  We were there for just a couple of hours, and recorded just 20 species.  Sadly, we did not see any bandicoots.

But, who's complaining?  We saw something far more exciting than a bandicoot.  At the junction of Trig Track and Possum Gully Walk, we saw this handsome male Glossy Black Cockatoo.  We tried to identify the species of casuarina he was enjoying, and the best we could do (let's be honest, the best Graham could do, I can take no credit) was that it was either Casurarina paludosa or C. pusilla.  Neither of these plants is mentioned in HANZAB as a food source for Glossy Black Cockatoos, which is possibly explained by the fact that the bird was 400 kilometres outside his range.

I had heard that some Glossy Black Cockatoos were displaced by the bushfires in Mallacoota and had been seen in Victoria, but I confess I was a little sceptical.  Not that they'd been seen in Victoria, but that they were still here.  I figured if the fires had forced them to fly west, that when it came time for them to migrate north, they would just fly north, whether from Mallacoota, or from central Victoria.  Apparently I was wrong.  The fires were in the summer of 2019/2020, more than two years ago.  Evidently, the birds were so stressed by their bushfire displacement (or they found some irresistible new delicious casurarina to eat) that they decided to stay put.  And who can blame them?  I don't know how many Glossy Blacks ventured west, but I'm told that just three or four remain.  As far as we could tell, this fellow was by himself.

Other birds we recorded included a couple of raptors (Brown Goshawk, Peregrine Falcon), some honeyeaters (Eastern Spinebill, New Holland, White-eared, White-plumed and Red and Little Wattlebirds), some very fine Common Bronzewings and some Red-browed Finches (which, I fear, are becoming rarer around Melbourne).  But nothing quite got our hearts pumping like this beautiful Glossy Black Cockatoo.