mjh73
Well-known member
Bit embarrassing really, a good birding spot less than an hour away from where I live and I've never been there before. Finally made the effort today, primarily hoping to see southern emu wren....
Bunyip State Park is a 16000Ha reserve 65km east of Melbourne. Generally a mix of heathland (esp to the south) and mountain ash forest. Large areas were burnt in the 2009 bushfires.
Arrived at the 3km Buttongrass Nature Trail in the south west of the park at about 0730, after a short trip down some gravel tracks that seemed to have [1] common bronzewing stationed at approximately 20m intervals....
First birds were the ubiquitous [2] superb fairy wren. Not to be confused with the splendid fairy wren, or the rare bloody marvelous fairy wren [I made the last one up - bear with me it's been hot today, I've probably got heat stroke]
Next up was a male [3] rufous whistler. Cracking little birds, saw several of these during the walk.
Other common woodland birds were picked up fairly easily
[4] grey fantail
[5] white throated treecreeper
[6] eastern yellow robin (just one of these which surprised me a bit)
[7] silvereye
[8] brown thornbill
[9] grey shrike thrush
A single [10] yellow tailed black cockatoo flew over, the odd one were seen later on too.
[11] kookaburra and [12] grey butcherbird were heard often but not seen.
[13] dusky woodswallow sat in a tree was nice, odd ones seen elsewhere on the wing too
First honeyeaters for the day [14] yellow faced honeyeater and [15] white eared honeyeater. Lots of these throughout the walk, especially white eared.
[16] crimson rosella
[17] blue winged parrot. First time I have seen these. First was a juvie up a tree, which I was a bit unsure of the ID of, but a small party of 4-5 seen later, and another 2 further into the walk confirmed it.
I was probably 1km into the walk at this point, and for the next 1km didn’t add any new species, but I was concentrating on the spiders webs in my path / face quite a lot. Arachnaphobia and birding do not go well at times.
Finally, at the boardwalks through the buttongrass I caught up with the [18] southern emu wrens. Hung around for a while trying (and failing) to get some half decent pics. While there I did add [19] wedge tailed eagle – high high up a fair distance away, but unmistakable silhouette.
Nearing the end of the walk were two [20] scarlet robins.
I expected that was it but as I sat in the car having a sandwich and a drink a [21] large billed scrubwren worked up the trees nearby – another new bird for me.
The 3km walk took 3hours in the end! Good morning though, pretty sure I will be back to Bunyip again.
Bunyip State Park is a 16000Ha reserve 65km east of Melbourne. Generally a mix of heathland (esp to the south) and mountain ash forest. Large areas were burnt in the 2009 bushfires.
Arrived at the 3km Buttongrass Nature Trail in the south west of the park at about 0730, after a short trip down some gravel tracks that seemed to have [1] common bronzewing stationed at approximately 20m intervals....
First birds were the ubiquitous [2] superb fairy wren. Not to be confused with the splendid fairy wren, or the rare bloody marvelous fairy wren [I made the last one up - bear with me it's been hot today, I've probably got heat stroke]
Next up was a male [3] rufous whistler. Cracking little birds, saw several of these during the walk.
Other common woodland birds were picked up fairly easily
[4] grey fantail
[5] white throated treecreeper
[6] eastern yellow robin (just one of these which surprised me a bit)
[7] silvereye
[8] brown thornbill
[9] grey shrike thrush
A single [10] yellow tailed black cockatoo flew over, the odd one were seen later on too.
[11] kookaburra and [12] grey butcherbird were heard often but not seen.
[13] dusky woodswallow sat in a tree was nice, odd ones seen elsewhere on the wing too
First honeyeaters for the day [14] yellow faced honeyeater and [15] white eared honeyeater. Lots of these throughout the walk, especially white eared.
[16] crimson rosella
[17] blue winged parrot. First time I have seen these. First was a juvie up a tree, which I was a bit unsure of the ID of, but a small party of 4-5 seen later, and another 2 further into the walk confirmed it.
I was probably 1km into the walk at this point, and for the next 1km didn’t add any new species, but I was concentrating on the spiders webs in my path / face quite a lot. Arachnaphobia and birding do not go well at times.
Finally, at the boardwalks through the buttongrass I caught up with the [18] southern emu wrens. Hung around for a while trying (and failing) to get some half decent pics. While there I did add [19] wedge tailed eagle – high high up a fair distance away, but unmistakable silhouette.
Nearing the end of the walk were two [20] scarlet robins.
I expected that was it but as I sat in the car having a sandwich and a drink a [21] large billed scrubwren worked up the trees nearby – another new bird for me.
The 3km walk took 3hours in the end! Good morning though, pretty sure I will be back to Bunyip again.
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