Yesterday, I spent a very pleasant (if a bit windy) afternoon birding in Eynesbury.
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| Eynesbury bushland |
Eynesbury is located 44 kilometres west of Melbourne. There's a golf course, a lake and some beautiful bushland and I've always thought it would be a great place to live.
My honeyeater list is very sparse this year and I thought I'd like to expand it a little. As soon as I got out of the car and heard the cacophony of lorikeet calls, I knew there were a lot of flowering eucalypts and I expected to see quite a few honeyeaters. How wrong I was! Quite a few lorikeets was what there were! Both Little and Purple-crowned by the dozen. The only honeyeaters I recorded were White-plumed, New Holland and Red Wattlebirds. My hopes for Brown-headed, White-naped or Fuscous were dashed. I had thought these birds would be easy.
Bird of the day was the Speckled Warbler, a magnificent pair posing on a dead stick. These really are very special birds. Next, I think, was the Jacky Winter. I lost count of how many there were. They posed cooperatively and I noticed a very faint lilac wash on the breast of more than one bird. I'd never seen this before and when I consulted HANZAB later, there was no reference to it. Third in line must be Diamond Firetails, always exquisite little birds. A small flock wanted to get onto my list, but did not hang around.
I thought the Brown Goshawk was the only creature enjoying the wind, but perhaps the Tree Martins and Dusky Woodswallows did too. After a short aerial display, the woodswallows clustered together high in a gum tree as if settling down for an early night.
I did see some other small birds (Superb Fairywrens, Yellow-tailed Thornbills, Red-browed Finches) but I suspect I might have seen more had it not been for the wind. My favourite bird, the Willie Wagtail, was not discouraged by the wind at all. Nor were the many unusually colourful Grey Fantails darting around energetically.
It was Friday afternoon and traffic getting to and from Eynesbury was heavy. Nevertheless, I clocked up over 50 species in a few hours in autumn, which isn't too bad. More important, I had a great afternoon. Let's face it, any afternoon I see a Speckled Warbler is a great afternoon.
