A late start made for a quiet trip through Yarra Bend with the ‘Birding in Yarra’ group.

Alwyn, Kate, Tessa and I started at VINC at 14.00. We first went along the ridge behind the nursery, where we saw a couple of noisy miners, a magpie and heard an eastern rosella and spotted pardalote, but dipped on the fan-tailed cuckoo that had been reported there, as well as the yellow-faced honeyeaters that are sometimes in the eucalypts here.

We went down to the river (dipping on the common bronzewing often present here) where we had a dusky moorhen and maned duck on the water. Tessa spotted a tawny frogmouth, then four red-rumped parrots looking for hollows, as well as a rainbow lorikeet getting in their way. Approaching the flying fox colony we had a small mixed flock of superb fairywren and brown thornbill, as well as something else we couldn’t quite ID – by call I suspect it was a white-browed scrubwren, but we couldn’t get group agreement on that.

In the melaleuca stand behind the colony we found plenty of grey fantail, red wattlebird and more fairywrens, but unfortunately the rufous whistler, weebill and white-winged triller I found last week appear to have moved on.

We were standing here wondering why the flying foxes were so agitated when Joshua G, who was separately leading a group in Yarra Bend, posted that he had seen two wedge-tailed eagles riding thermals very high above the park. He saw them from the same ridge above VINC where we had been 40 minutes earlier; unfortunately we couldn’t spot them from down by the river. This was the first ever observation of wedge-tailed eagle in Yarra, so congrats Josh!

A sulphur-crested cockatoo on the eastern freeway was a consolation prize.

Under the eastern freeway bridge over the river we dipped on grey shrikethrush, eastern spinebill and mistletoebird. We went up to the red tag casting pool where there were magpies and swallows but not much more, we circled back to the start.

Tessa, Kate and I then did a quick survey of the Westfield Grassland Reserve, where surprisingly we did add one more to our list – a white-faced heron. A single noisy miner was the only other bird present though, so it was time to call it a day.

19 species in 99 minutes. Checklists.

  1. Maned duck
  2. Tawny frogmouth
  3. Dusky moorhen
  4. White-faced heron
  5. Sulphur-crested cockatoo
  6. Eastern rosella
  7. Red-rumped parrot
  8. Rainbow lorikeet
  9. Superb fairywren
  10. Noisy miner
  11. Red wattlebird
  12. White-plumed honeyeater
  13. Spotted pardalote
  14. Brown thornbill
  15. Australian magpie
  16. Pied currawong
  17. Grey fantail
  18. Little raven
  19. Welcome swallow