2503 Herring Island
This morning Christine Parrott, Claire Kay, Jonathan Andrew Tickner, Tessa Koumoundouros, Archer Callaway, Aidan Powell and I met at Como Landing for a pelagic unlike any other. Our boat, the HMS Parks Victoria, departed early – leaving two of the crew behind! – and off the port side we spied a great cormorant, two little black cormorants, coots, dusky moorhen, little corella a pacific black duck and dozens of silver gulls on the mud flats – a worthy start to this grand sea voyage.
Land ho! After less than minute on the punt we landed on Herring Island, adding exotic rock doves. Here we also heard spotted pardalote, rainbow lorikeet and white-browed scrubwren.
Heading up the hill toward the central picnic area, we had magpie-larks grazing, welcome swallows circling, silvereye calling, and Archer’s keen eye spotted superb fairywren hopping in the grass. As we approached the fairywrens also we noticed white-plumed honeyeaters, brown thornbill, eastern spinebill and grey fantail. The latter two are pretty decent ticks for Yarra in the summer!
Behind us somewhere a pied currawong called.
Down the trail toward the gallery on the northern edge we had noisy miner, more white-plumed honeyeaters, thornbills and fairywren.
Here we also thought we had two uncommon birds for Yarra: Jono thought he heard a New Holland honeyeater and Aidan a mistletoebird. We tried to locate both but failed, and weren’t confident enough on what we heard to record. One day!
A small flock of little ravens flew past as we turned west. Both wattlebirds appeared for us here – two little, one red – as well as a spotted dove, more silvereye and another grey fantail. Further down the path we also saw the the spinebill that had been calling earlier, it appeared for us only very briefly before it was gone.
Looking north across the river toward Richmond and we MAY have had an Australasian swamphen. Archer got a glimpse of a larger bird in the reed bed that may have been right. We tried for a while but it didn’t reappear, and my heart broke.
At the western point we had welcome swallows on a powerline, more pacific black ducks and coots in the water, and dusky moorhen – including one on nest in the reed beds on the Stonnington side of the river. A common myna flew overhead.
We sat next to a hobbit hole and took a water break – Claire’s bottle sounded remarkably like a black-faced cuckooshrike – where we chatted and watched the silvereye and brown thornbills.
Looping back toward the landing we mostly had more of the same, though we did add one final bird while waiting for the punt – a little pied cormorant sitting down in the mud.
Herring Island is a surprisingly good spot, with dense foliage and a wide variety of species (by Yarra standards). Biggest dip was definitely magpie, probably followed by chestnut teal – there had been some present while the group was assembling, but not once we began. We also missed common starling, common blackbird, Australian white ibis.