The continuing adventures of a recently-confessed year-lister…
When I left off after the last blog post, I was on 282 for the year, including a few heard-only records (most of which I expect to change into seen by the end of the year) and including 6 IOC splits not yet recognised on ebird. This number is already way beyond anything I’ve approached before, and has got me thinking about what is possible for the whole year. This particular blog post was supposed to be the tale of the 18 to get me to the triple century, and so started life titled merely, “300”. Instead, as of today (July 20), I am marooned on 299 as South Australia goes into a snap 7-day lockdown terminating my plans to pick up the one remaining species I need for that nice round number. Sadly, barring a miracle rarity in Toorak Gardens, the closest possible tick is some 15km away, well outside my 2.5km legal exercise radius.
Anyway, rewinding to 282: since then I’ve done a few more trips that have brought me to the brink. Of course I am way behind Mike Potter, who remains on track for the record (374), but 299 is a lot more than I ever imagined, especially since I didn’t begin the year with a list in mind, it has just sort-of evolved. This blog-post tells the story of those subsequent trips and shows some pictures along the way.
Sat/Sun 19-20th June
Still hopeful of connecting with the Orange-bellied Parrot that has occasionally been seen on Bird Island, I met Mike and Ed Smith for an unsuccessful further recce of the area. Despite fairly poor weather, once again we found good numbers of Elegant Parrot, but none of the groups was the one that OBP is hanging around with. Keen not to waste a trip and keep the list ticking over I followed Mike to Mulgundawa, a regular Cattle Egret site. At first it seemed I would dip here again, until with careful scanning we with the scopes we found a couple very distant egrets poking out between the cattle. Mike then carried on to the Wellington ferry before another drive down south for a pelagic. I headed north to Murray Bridge after realising it was the only place I could reach with the meagre supply of petrol I had left. Overall it was a relatively unsuccessful day, but did add one to the list.
The next day I kicked myself because I realised that in coming straight home from Murray Bridge I had driven within a couple of km of a site where Banded Lapwing have been seen semi-regularly over the winter. So back up the SE Fwy I headed on Sunday afternoon. I cruised back and forth along Bremer Range Rd a few times before a likely candidate flushed from the road into the field where they had been reported several times. Now, in nice late afternoon light I was able to get great views of three birds.
Sat/Sun 26th-27th June
Saturday morning Paul Coddington and I headed to Browns Rd to check out reports of a female Rose Robin from Monday. Despite covering a lot of ground back and forth, and finding more robins than we’ve ever seen there, we failed to find her. The next day the weather was bad but I wanted to check out a White-necked Heron on the Onkaparinga Wetlands. I just about dodged the rain, and did pick up a Darter and a Mallard new for the year, but failed to find my target. It was feeling like another unsuccessful weekend until late afternoon on Sunday while the girls were out shopping, I headed to Mt Lofty summit. In the gloomy fog I had another go to find Bassian Thrush, a lovely but skulking zoothera (they all are!). And finally I was successful. So overall, a mixed bag of a weekend, finishing on 287.
Sat/Sun 3-4 July
This year-listing lark is starting to get serious. Another weekend, another outing. In fact on 2nd we were supposed to fly to Tasmanian for a family holiday. Covid-induced uncertainty reigned on Wednesday night, 48 hours before our flight. SA went to greater restrictions and closed borders with basically everywhere except Tasmania. Fearful that we would get caught there or have to quarantine on our return we pulled the plug on the trip on Thursday, 24 hours before our intended departure. Come Saturday, we had no plans for the weekend or even the following week. The weather seemed poor for a bike ride, so I packed the Kluger and headed up to the Riverland and Gluepot.
First stop was the bridge at Blanchetown where I hoped for Fairy Martin. But although they are regular breeders here, making their nests under the bridge, they were nowhere to be seen. In fact ebird suggest they are nowhere at all in the state at the moment, so I am keeping my fingers crossed they come back to breed in the spring. I also found a raptor that looked possible for Little Eagle, but through bins I could not get enough on it to be sure, and did not have my camera with me for record shots that might have helped for a retrospective ID. I did, however pick up a year tick in the form of a Pied Butcherbird which posed high on a distant dead branch. I saw a few more throughout the day.
Next on the itinerary was Renmark, with the plan of checking out some recent sightings there, and then I would gradually work my way back to Waikerie, ending in Gluepot to camp. Renmark was a bit of a bust — no sign of the recently reported Grey Goshawk (not that this was unexpected) and no sign of a White-necked Heron on the foreshore of the river. So I headed back to Berri for a walk around Martin Bend Conservation Park. It was now fairly late in the day, and pretty quiet, but I still connected with my main target Little Friarbird.
As I worked my way back along the Murray I wanted a walk around Banrock Station wetlands, another spot where White-necked Heron has been seen semi-regularly over the years. I visited here with family (en route to Canberra) a few years ago and have always wanted to come back. Their wine might not be the greatest drop going, but the conservation project they have underway is well worth supporting. I had a nice late afternoon walk around the wetland and across the boardwalk — Regent Parrot was my best bird — but no WNH, and nothing new.
I arrived at Waikerie earlier than expected, grabbed a cold beer and early dinner at the pub, then drove into Gluepot in the dark. It was a cold evening and only got colder during the night. I made sure to wear my thermals in the swag! The next morning I woke to an exceedingly crisp 2 or 3 degrees, and emerged from my swag to the sound of … silence. It has never been so quiet — there was no dawn chorus at all. The mallee itself remains in a poor state after the plague of caterpillars in the summer that denuded swathes of trees. With nothing singing I had a leisurely breakfast and cup of tea waiting for it to warm up a bit, hoping that a few more degrees on the thermometer would also encourage a bit more avian activity.
At 7.30, hopeful but not expectant of a Red-lored Whistler, I headed for the Mallefowl Walk where Paul Coddington and I had had one two years ago. Not today. A couple of Crested Bellbirds and a Gilbert’s Whistler were my best birds from that walk, but even as it warmed up fractionally, there were still very few birds around. A short vigil at Grasswren Tank hide yielded a small flock of Mulga Parrots who came for a drink, but nothing else. At least I was able to add to my almost becalmed list with a gorgeous Striped Honeyeater on Track 7 as I drove back to break my camp. These are a fairly scarce and somewhat nomadic mallee species and perhaps because of this, one of my favourites. Apart form the outside chance of the RLW, this was my main target. I took a record shot but didn’t try for better pics.
Because it was such hard work, I decided on an early exit and perhaps a detour via Browns Rd on my way home to Adelaide. As I passed the homestead I called in to the visitor centre for a final check of the board. Between my arrival last night and now (about midday) a record of RLW from Saturday had appeared. All the way out here in the sticks, I needed to give myself every chance at this rarity, so I turned the Kluger around and drove back the 15mins to the Grasswren Walk. Sadly, an hour’s walk back and forth through the best looking habitat yielded no sighting. At one point I was pretty sure I heard the song, very distant. But it was a single burst and ended before I could work out how far away or even the exact direction. I walked off into the mallee to search but it was completely silent thereafter. I have not made a record of this on ebird, because unlike the others, I am not 100% certain. I added a few more species on this walk, bringing the the species tally to 26 and making it seem as if the birding was better than it actually was.
At 1430 I rolled out of Gluepot and began the trek back to Adelaide. It was now too late to get to Browns Rd before dark so the diversion was aborted. At Blanchetown bridge I paused again — still no Fairy Martins, but a nicely posed Darter — then as I sped along Sturt Hwy, a hairy lump south of the road caught my eye: a Southern Hairy-nosed Wombat was sitting by its burrow. I turned the car around and drove past again, but as soon as I pulled up on the hard shoulder is scuttled down its burrow. The sighting, however, was a reminder that this behaviour — sitting out in late afternoon sunshine in the winter — is pretty common and just about the best way to get good views of SHNW. So I turned off the highway into Brookfield just 2km further on and drove the 3km to the homestead and then back again. I counted three more wombats doing the same thing, one of which posed very nicely in diffuse golden evening light, for some decent shots out of the car window.
Mon 5th July
Because of our planned trip to Tasmania, I had the whole week booked off work. I decided to work Monday and Tuesday anyway, because I had a lot to get through, working towards a major grant proposal submission later in the month, and with a clear diary I would be able to devote uninterrupted time to this. But I decided to head up to the local mallee for a cheeky twitch first thing on Monday, before getting stuck back into the grant proposal. The reason was the female Rose Robin that I had missed a week earlier. Birding pals Sam Gordon and Sam Matthews had managed to relocate her on Saturday, and various other mates (including Mike Potter) had twitched her successfully on Sunday while I was up in Gluepot. I did not want to miss out.
I arrived at Browns Rd suitably early on a lovely morning, armed with GPS coordinates and get-in-and-out-quick plan. I found a few other birders loitering around the block hoping someone like me with specific gen would come along, and led them into the requisite area, which was actually not far from where Paul and I had looked unsuccessfully 10 days earlier. Almost immediately — in fact the first bird I saw — there she was, Rose Robin, low down in one of the native pines. She was very active feeding, flitting about both near the ground and higher up in the canopy and gave us the run-around. Eventually we lost her just before yet more birders arrived. We all spent the next 45 minutes looking when she reappeared and this time posed very nicely for the small group allowing reasonable pics. At this point I bade farewell to the group, and started back for the car. A Restless Flycatcher called as I walked out and I tried to bring it in with some playback. But needing to get back to Adelaide so I could still get most of a full day’s work in, I did not pursue it. It went down as heard only, but my ebird list still ticked over by two, with the flycatcher and the robin. 292.
7-10 July
Nikki was keen that we rearrange some kind of replacement for Tasmania, so she could at least get away somewhere during the school holidays. I made a few suggestions (many with a double-agenda) and was really surprised when the option she picked was a few days at Mt Ive station in the Gawler Ranges north of the Eyre Peninsula. It was a bit of a flog to get up there, but we whiled away the time on the long drive listening to some true crime podcasts. It was particularly creepy to be listening to the tale of John Bunting and the “bodies in the barrels” murders as we drove through Snowtown north of Adelaide. When we stopped there for a rest break we had no idea we had parked opposite the deserted bank building where he committed the last of his 11 atrocious crimes and stored his victims’ bodies in barrels in the old vault. It’s one thing when it’s really historical, but this was only 20 years ago!
Mt Ive is a working sheep station, about 130km off the bitumen. It covers 900 sq km (making it an “average” size), mostly an ancient red-rock, rolling landscape with hills covered in saltbush and spinifex. It is adjacent to Lake Gairdner, one of three massive salt lakes in South Australia (the others being Lake Eyre and Lake Torrens), and has some amazing rock formations and scenery. As well as running sheep, they offer camping and some basic rooms and cottages for punters like us who want a bit of outback experience. It was good to escape 4G signal too, forcing us to read books, take long walks, drink wine. And, oh, there might have been a little bit of birding too.
Actually I tried hard to avoid the birding being too much in Nikki’s face, and just enjoy the wide open spaces and unique outback lifestyle. We arrived late afternoon and chilled out on the table outside our small but comfortable room (we chose this rather than camping) before wandering away from the buildings to admire the incredible night sky.
Sadly by the next morning clouds had rolled over and it was getting breezy. We drove out to Lake Gairnder, enjoyed the solitude, and the lake views — unusually there was actually some water in it! I added two common birds to my year list that I was sure of picking up at some stage: Yellow-throated Miner and Black-faced Woodwallow. Nice to get nevertheless.
Back at at the station we prepared some lunch and I nipped over to the shearing shed. Out the back of the shed I tracked down some squeaking and finally had awful, but tickable flight views of a Western Grasswren. After lunch we jumped in the car again and drove about half-way up Mt Scott on the rough 4WD drive track before deciding that maybe it was a road too far for the Kluger. We walked the rest of the way to the crest and admired the view from the spinifex-covered hill-top. It was very blustery and quite cold, but I had some gen that Short-tailed Grasswrens were up here. In fact after a short bit of playback I heard a high-pitch squeak in response, and I knew there was one there. But it wouldn’t show :-(, and pretty-soon shut up entirely. I tried another spot west of the summit for 20 minutes and again heard a short, gentle, high-pitched contact call response, but again saw nothing in unpromising conditions.
I could tell that I was wearing Nikki’s patience thin by now, so we walked back to the car, and instead drove to check out the wombat holes in another part of the station before dusk.
The following morning it dawned much stiller, and a bit foggy, but it was clear the fog would burn off pretty quickly. We decided on a walk to the summit of Mt Ive, on the south side of the valley opposite Mt Scott. Again we drove part of the way then walked. A few White-browed Babblers, a couple of Black-faced Woodswallows and a Grey Butcherbird were all I saw, and there was no sign of any Grasswrens on the way up. At the summit I left Nikki and walked a few hundred metres further west where the station log book had a recent record of STGW. This time I heard a tiny peep for literally one second, and then nothing. And once again I knew I had to limit my time birding or risk pissing off Nikki who had been very patient and indulgent up to now.
After lunch we got ready to leave, and I was on the verge of pointing the Kluger away from the station, when spur of the moment I let my heart rule my head and turned the car back up the track to Mt Scott, ignoring Nikki’s protests and trying to convince her: this was not a waste of time, would be fun; and was also my last chance for STGW — in fact this area is just about the only place in the world that it’s still possible to see this bird. I suspect in the end she was convinced by neither of the first two arguments, and maybe not even the last except for my likely poor mood if I didn’t have one last crack. Sorry, babe!
I resolved to drive all the way to the top, which was a bit hairy at times, and the smell from the clutch suggested the Kluger was not entirely in favour, but we made it — 20min to cover the 3km gives an idea of the kind of track we are talking about. I left Nikki in the car with her words: “don’t come back until you’ve got it” ringing in my ears. This wasn’t quite the unequivocal vote of confidence, trust and unconditional love you might think… more of a threat. I walked over the summit to the spot where I’d heard birds yesterday and almost immediately heard a little squeaked response to my short playback confirming the birds were still there. And then — oh joy — I saw a cocked tail scuttle between two clumps of spinifex about 15m ahead of me. It popped back into the same gap and I squeezed off a record shot. less than five minutes and this was enough for the tick and the proof of Short-tailed Grasswren, so I was just about to turn and leave, when it popped back to the same spot again, still trying to work out where the vocal intruder from a minute or two early had gone. I took a slightly better photo as for once a Grasswren stayed still in front of my camera, and then gradually I approached for better and better pics as the bird kept jumping out to the same little rock, clearly a favoured lookout. As I watched it and filled my CF card, I realised there was a second bird. Elated, and pleased with the photo ops these gorgeous little birds had provided, I bounded back to the car where my lovely wife was waiting patiently.
I guided the Kluger carefully back down to the valley floor then we bombed along the good quality, unsealed road to Iron Knob. A pair of Wedge-tailed Eagles on the railways tracks that carry ore from Iron Knob to Whyalla enlivened the drive to Port Augusta, as did a heavy rain-shower that gave rise to one of the most spectacular double-rainbows I have ever seen, forcing a hasty pullover onto the hard shoulder for the photo op.
Rather than try to make it all the way back to Adelaide, we had decided to stop in a motel in Port Augusta. I was grateful for the early rest, and we walked out to Red Cliffs Matthew Flinders lookout, a spot not far from the northern-most point that Flinders reached in 1802 on his exploration of Spencer Gulf.
An early walk around Arid Lands Botanic gardens, a mere 2km from our motel might have yielded another couple of year ticks (for instance Chirruping Wedgebill and/or Rufous Fieldwren) but I could tell Nikki was keen to get back to Adelaide, so didn’t push my agenda. I had been indulged enough yesterday when it really mattered — the Arid Lands birds I could have another shot at later in the year, but the STGW was my only chance. Instead we broke the journey 90min south of Port Augusta at Telowie Gorge. This was another destination I had in mind with a dual agenda. It was a lovely very scenic, short walk up into the gorge, just right for stretching the legs. We hoped for a sighting of the rare Yellow-footed Rock-wallaby, but despite careful scanning we were ultimately disappointed on that front. Fortunately I did manage to find year tick #297, Grey-fronted Honeyeater, a fairly scarce and isolated, but very lovely honeyeater that I have only seen once before in the Flinders Ranges in 2016.
Sun 19 July
The weekend of 18/19 July there was supposed to be another pelagic. I was not booked on it, but Mike Potter was, and when but when it was cancelled I took that chance to suggest that he and Dani come over for dinner so our long-suffering wives could meet and exchange “war stories”. Although we promised we would not talk birding incessantly — and we were good to our word — we did cook up a last-minute day-trip trip up to the Riverland for the following day, for the outside chance of a Grey Goshawk that had been reported a couple of times over a 3 week period.
I picked Mike up soon after 6am, and we bombed north and then east, almost non-stop to Renmark. As we drove through Monash I spied a large honeyeater fly across the road and realised here was another year tick: Blue-faced Honeyeater. In fact these proved one of the commonest birds of the day and I was embarrassed at my own inattention from two weeks earlier when I failed to find a single one.
Once in Remark, an hour or so walking and driving around the likely area yielded no Goshawk, so we interrupted our search for breakfast at a local cafe. More Blue-faced Honeyeaters showed well as well left Renmark.
We searched again for the GG, but that part of the mission was unsuccessful. Unselfishly, Mike suggested at about 11am we have a change of scenery and visit Cooltong Conservation Park, a small but rich stand of mallee only about 20km away. The main target here was new one for my year list, and within minutes of arrival we’d heard the barely-audible, high-pitched contact call of Chestnut Quail-thrush. It didn’t take long to track it down and in the end we counted at least 6 CQT in a relatively small area, along with a nice selection of mallee birds including Chestnut-rumped Thornbill, Crested Bellbird, White-browed Babbler, Red-capped Robin, Jacky Winter, Greater Bluebonnet, Yellow-plumed, White-eared and Brown-headed Honeyeaters.
With me now on 299, we agreed to abandon the goshawk search and prioritise my triple century by searching for Apostlebird on the way back to Adelaide. We detoured via a few potential Apostlebird sites, but you already know from the title of this blog post that we dipped. Despite the miss, it had been a very enjoyable day. At the time, I simply resolved to chasing something “easy” near Adelaide the following weekend. But as you also already know, instead of birding this weekend, I — and the rest of the state — will be confined to barracks. Three hundred will have to wait until next weekend… at the earliest.
