Planning for the Mountain Creek Road Expedition

The COG mid-month walk planned for 20 October 2010 is a repeat of that undertaken in about this season 2009.  It visits 3 TSRs along Mountain Creek Rd (in NSW, just over the Murrumbidgee at Urriarra Crossing).

We will meet at Stromlo Forest park (on Uriarra Rd, opposite Coppins Crossing Rd) for car pooling, planning to leave there at 9:00am.  Members may wish to arrive a bit earlier for a (traditional) hunt for White-fronted Chats in the grass there.

The location of the TSRs is shown in this extract from Google Earth.
The three Reserves are shown together with the COG grid squares.  The marker in square F12 is at the junction of Fairlight and Mountain Creek Roads: this has been a fruitful spot in the past and it might be worthwhile stopping there for 20 minutes on the way back.

I expect it to be about 30kms from Urriarra Crossing to Cavan TSR (where we will start our birding).  Most of this will be on bitumen with a little on good dirt roads.  2WD will be adequate.  According to my odometer the track leading into Cavan TSR is 20.5km from the junction of Fairlight and Mountain Creek Rds: it is in a low point between two ridges and on the RHS of the road.  (The other two Reserves are easily visible from the road.)

Frances and I visited Cavan on October 5 this year.  There were a good lot of birds there and the displays of native flowers were excellent - and likely to be better in two weeks.

The table below lists the birds seen in each of the Reserves in the course of:
  1. a visit by ANPS in 2008;
  2. the COG mid-week walk in 2009; and 
  3. some additional visits by myself and Francesin 2010.

tbl 3 Reserves
RAOU NEW_NAME Cavan Tinkers Creek Mullion
43 Crested Pigeon
Crested Pigeon Crested Pigeon
202 Australian Wood Duck

Australian Wood Duck
211 Grey Teal

Grey Teal
221 Brown Goshawk
Brown Goshawk
268 Gang-gang Cockatoo
Gang-gang Cockatoo
269 Sulphur-crested Cockatoo Sulphur-crested Cockatoo Sulphur-crested Cockatoo Sulphur-crested Cockatoo
273 Galah Galah Galah Galah
281 Australian King-Parrot Australian King-Parrot Australian King-Parrot
282 Crimson Rosella Crimson Rosella Crimson Rosella Crimson Rosella
282 Crimson Rosella Crimson Rosella Crimson Rosella Crimson Rosella
288 Eastern Rosella
Eastern Rosella Eastern Rosella
295 Red-rumped Parrot
Red-rumped Parrot Red-rumped Parrot
322 Laughing Kookaburra
Laughing Kookaburra Laughing Kookaburra
326 Sacred Kingfisher
Sacred Kingfisher
329 Rainbow Bee-eater Rainbow Bee-eater Rainbow Bee-eater
337 Pallid Cuckoo Pallid Cuckoo Pallid Cuckoo Pallid Cuckoo
338 Fan-tailed Cuckoo
Fan-tailed Cuckoo Fan-tailed Cuckoo
342 Horsfield's Bronze-Cuckoo Horsfield's Bronze-Cuckoo Horsfield's Bronze-Cuckoo Horsfield's Bronze-Cuckoo
357 Welcome Swallow
Welcome Swallow Welcome Swallow
361 Grey Fantail Grey Fantail Grey Fantail Grey Fantail
364 Willie Wagtail Willie Wagtail Willie Wagtail
365 Leaden Flycatcher Leaden Flycatcher Leaden Flycatcher
380 Scarlet Robin
Scarlet Robin
381 Red-capped Robin
Red-capped Robin
392 Eastern Yellow Robin Eastern Yellow Robin

401 Rufous Whistler Rufous Whistler Rufous Whistler Rufous Whistler
408 Grey Shrike-thrush Grey Shrike-thrush Grey Shrike-thrush Grey Shrike-thrush
415 Magpie-lark Magpie-lark Magpie-lark Magpie-lark
424 Black-faced Cuckoo-shrike Black-faced Cuckoo-shrike Black-faced Cuckoo-shrike Black-faced Cuckoo-shrike
430 White-winged Triller White-winged Triller White-winged Triller
453 White-throated Gerygone White-throated Gerygone White-throated Gerygone White-throated Gerygone
463 Western Gerygone
Western Gerygone Western Gerygone
465 Weebill Weebill Weebill Weebill
470 Striated Thornbill Striated Thornbill Striated Thornbill Striated Thornbill
471 Yellow Thornbill

Yellow Thornbill
475 Brown Thornbill Brown Thornbill Brown Thornbill
484 Buff-rumped Thornbill
Buff-rumped Thornbill Buff-rumped Thornbill
486 Yellow-rumped Thornbill
Yellow-rumped thornbill Yellow-rumped Thornbill
488 White-browed Scrubwren White-browed Scrubwren White-browed Scrubwren
504 Speckled Warbler Speckled Warbler

529 Superb Fairy-wren Superb Fairy-wren Superb Fairy-wren Superb Fairy-wren
558 White-throated Treecreeper White-throated Treecreeper White-throated Treecreeper White-throated Treecreeper
564 Mistletoebird Mistletoebird Mistletoebird
565 Spotted Pardalote
Spotted Pardalote Spotted Pardalote
574 Silvereye Silvereye Silvereye
614 Yellow-faced Honeyeater Yellow-faced Honeyeater Yellow-faced Honeyeater Yellow-faced Honeyeater
625 White-plumed Honeyeater White-plumed Honeyeater

634 Noisy Miner

Noisy Miner
638 Red Wattlebird Red Wattlebird Red Wattlebird
645 Noisy Friarbird Noisy Friarbird Noisy Friarbird Noisy Friarbird
662 Red-browed Finch
Red-browed finch
671 Olive-backed Oriole Olive-backed Oriole Olive-backed Oriole Olive-backed Oriole
679 Satin Bowerbird Satin Bowerbird Satin Bowerbird
693 White-winged Chough White-winged Chough
White-winged Chough
694 Pied Currawong Pied Currawong Pied Currawong
702 Grey Butcherbird
Grey Butcherbird Grey Butcherbird
705 Australian Magpie Australian Magpie Australian Magpie Australian Magpie
728 Restless Flycatcher Restless Flycatcher

930 Australian Raven
Australian Raven Australian Raven
976 Striated Pardalote Striated Pardalote Striated Pardalote Striated Pardalote
991 Common Blackbird

Common Blackbird

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Insects from pine trees

Image
This afternoon (13/1/2015) we were looking out of our sunroom and noticed a strange bit of mist.  On getting my binoculars on the case I found it to be a cloud of tens of thousand of insects.  They appeared with naked eye to be flying away, but with binoculars I thought they were circling. Here are some images In the second one it may be possible to see there are two streams coming from the top of each tree. There was a loud buzzing noise but that could just be several thousand wings. Earlier in the day Frances had been to some nearby willows and they were infested with many little black soft bodied insects.  Perhaps they shifted to the pines and were swarming? Help!! Any information welcome. A colleague, from Wamboin, had noticed a similat phenomenon, but involvng eucalypts rather than pines!  Here are the photos he took with his phone. I have consulted some expert friends.   Their responses were: I would have gone for chironomids. I rec...
Read more

A tour of the West (part 1)

Image
A friend from my time in the UN sent me some photos of her family trip along Route 66.  They did this is a large camperwagon rather than a Chevy Corvette (apparently the kids jacked up about being offered a trip in the trunk).  It seems to have been a very good trip for them and most interesting to see their photos.  It was also educational for me, as I found out the German for rocking chair (schaukelstuhl, since you ask). They did 7200 miles in 30 days - a pretty serious bit of distance. This made me think of the trips we did in 1981 when living in Denver.  Frances initiated that idea by getting a book about the National Parks of the West  and marking interesting places.  I then worked out a route on a Rand-McNally Road Atlas (GPS was unknown then  - as were iPhones, personal computers and the internet).  From memory, taking nearly the whole Summer school holidays we covered about 10,000 miles in 70 days.  Here, approximately,  are ...
Read more

Maslins beach rules

Image
Anyone who was in Adelaide in the 1970s will be having a good nudge nudge at that title.  However the beach is really nice even though it is the haunt (in Summer ) of naked people.  (As an aside one of the 'van park staff was talking to some other guests and commented that the sights on the beach in Summer were not at all exciting.)  In April it is the haunt of seniors, many of them exercising their dogs, and thus a far more attractive place. Getting to the beach was a walk of about 1km along roads, from our van.  The second half of this went past a rather daggy looking paddock with many formed ridges in it, as though it was irrigated, although a water sources wasn't evident.  The paddock got interesting towards the end as some green parrots appeared.  Thanks to Frances eye for detail we have subsequently identified these as Elegant Parrots: my first lifer for 2014.    The locale is indicated by the red lines in this mudmap: Here are the bird...
Read more