My hunt for Glossy Black-Cockatoos

On 26 March 2022 Birdlife Australia (BLA) had a special event, in association with the Glossy Black Conservancy, of collecting data  on Glossy Black-Cockatoos (hereafter, Glossies) in Australia.  

The Mallacoota area was important for this as our area is (or possibly was, after the Black Summer fires) a stronghold of the species.  The first map is snipped from the linked BLA page.

In part this distribution is influenced by the relatively high presence of the Black She-oak (Allocasuarina littoralis) which is the main food source of the Glossies.  The second map comes from Flora of Victoria.

The basic plan was to cover sites where Glossies were felt likely to be and spend an hour trying to find the birds, or at least trees in which they have been feeding.  Interested people had attended a workshop mounted by BLA two weeks ago to explain methods etc.  A key aspect of this was the system of grid cells forming the search areas and efforts in Mallacoota were coordinated by Leonie Daws.  I had put my hand up to cover three areas: the first was the grid around home, the other two were on the far side of Bottom Lake.

This next map shows the route I followed for the first site (as I logged all birds seen to eBird as I went).

It was just getting light as I set off.  Since I expected to locate the birds in the first instance by sound the level of illumination wasn't too important. 

No luck with that walk (although I did record quite a good list for the area).

After breakfast I took myself off to the Ferngully Track off the Fairhaven Rd (or as some wag has renamed it, the "Fairhaven Freeway").  This is a screen grab from the very good BLA Glossy recording app.  It shows the grid cell boundaries and the track I walked.  I had chosen this area as when I went there pre-fire I found a good heap of chewings at one point, so my basic plan was to follow the arrowed tracks.  

If I had time (and was feeling frisky) I would put in at least a few minutes exploring the track labelled A and thus knock off a 3rd cell.  As it turned out that track was totally invisible on the ground and, as the walk up from the cleared area was very strong on the word 'up', I was felling somewhat used by the time I got back there, I kept to the simplest plan.

I did a separate eBird list for the leg up to the junction and the rest down to the private property. 

Here is the start of the track.  The reason the track is a no through road is because of the disappearance of track A.  If that still existed I think it ended up, after some adventures involving the David Creek Track (which of course may also have vanished) on Duncan Rd.  Whatever there was enough track  left for my purposes.

Since I didn't know how badly the track was chopped up, I parked off Fairhaven Road and walked it all (probably about 5km in total).

As I had driven from the Highway (about 20km in total) I had noticed quite a few stands of mature and unburnt Allocasuarinas beside the road.  This continued up Ferngully Track (or Fern Gully track - do you believe Google Maps😁 or the dude who makes signs for Parks 😥?).  Lots of fat looking cones up in the trees.  However there was no sign of chewings, and I did get off the track by a few metres several times to check.

Eventually when into the Eastward oriented part of the track I did find what I took to be a few chewings.   They were not a major carpet such as occurs when a family of Glossies really gets stuck in, but more suggestive of them tasting the product and rejecting it.  That was the nearest I came to locating any Glossies.

There was some blossom of other plants around.  Acacia terminalis was beginning to flower.

This is the bottom of the track heading in to private land.  And yes, this bit of the track was as steep as it looks.

As well as the wattle some of the gum trees - I suspect Bloodwood, Corymbia gummifera - were in flower.

I hope those are all the same species!

On the way home I stopped at Johnson's Bridge to try to spot the Black Bittern seen there a few weeks ago.  Fail.  Nearly made up for by seeing 3 Great Egrets on the Genoa Flats.