COG finds a few birds on Red Hill


16 members (I don’t think there were any guests) gathered, in some cases after experiencing the parking lot formerly known as Kent St, at the foot of Red Hill for a lap of the Western element of Red Hill Nature Reserve.  
The day was quite warm (already about 15oC but a vigorous wind was blowing.

Setting off up the ridge some Casuarina cones were noticed ....
 ... leading to thoughts about Glossy Black-Cockatoos.  However the trees themselves did not look in great shape, and appeared to have few cones.
We followed pretty much the traditional route for exploring this area but birds were very hard to find.  Song was almost entirely absent.  We thought this could be due to a number of factors including:
  • ·         The wind causing birds to seek shelter;
  • ·         Overgrazing by kangaroos resulting in there being little shelter to be had due to lack of understorey; and
  • ·         The presence of quite a lot of Noisy Miners – whose presence may be explained  by the lack of understorey.

The greatest diversity of birds was a in a small copse of mixed shrubs on the top of the ridge.  
This included a Speckled Warbler; several Silvereyes; 2 Spotted Pardalotes excavating nest tunnels; a Grey Shrikethrush and 2 White-browed Scrubwrens.  All of these were additions to our trip list.
In addition to the Spotted Pardalotes breeding activities were mainly displayed by larger birds: female Australian Wood Duck visiting probable nest site; 
Sulphur-crested Cockatoo (ditto); 
and Crimson Rosella coming from a nest box and interpreted as occupied nest.  An Eastern Rosella was sitting close to a hollow, but it looked more Pardalote than Rosella sized so was not claimed as a breeding record.
Surprisingly missing in action were thornbills (0 of 5 possible species seen); Cuckoos (none seen although 5 species have been reported around the broader area) and smaller Honeyeaters.  In total we recorded 28 species shown in thiseBird Checklist.

I did get snaps of a few more species:

One of a group of 4 White-winged Choughs
 A solitary - and silent - Laughing Kookaburra
 Also solitary (less surprisingly) and silent (very surprising) was a Grey Butcherbird.
As with many areas apart from Wattle there were few native plants in flower:  I think this is Cryptandra amara.


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