2508 Yarra Bend
I’ve been all over Yarra Bend this week. On Tuesday I completed a bird survey for the Abbotsford Riverbankers, on both Tuesday and Thursday I led groups from the University of Melbourne Wildlife Conservation Society for a mix of bird- and batwatching, while also doing a little bit for myself.
Abbotsford Riverbankers
I started with a survey of the Abbotsford Riverbankers-managed area along the Main Yarra Trail below Dights Falls. Jonathan T and I do this monthly, though he’s off to Mount Korong this week chasing honeyeaters (jealous!) so I did it solo.
It was a very productive trip, with a few unusual birds, including eastern spinebills making their way through the correa, long-billed corella and a grey currawong overhead. I also had the return of both white-plumed honeyeater and superb fairywren, both of which are reasonably common here but have been absent the past couple of surveys.
The fairywren were feeding in a wattle and it would have made for a beautiful shot if I’d remembered that I turned off subject recognition when taking some landscapes last week. I have a lot of near-miss shots like the one below, where absent other instruction the autofocus has grabbed the foreground wattle rather than the bird.
There are also cases where the positioning was poor regardless of what the autofocus was choosing to do, like the shot below – the bird being obscured by both its perch and its food, and against a dull grey sky background. I haven’t really edited these pictures beyond cropping them and a bit of exposure increase on the first, so that vibrant gold is straight out of camera. I hope it’s clear why I’m upset that I wasn’t properly ready!
I tracked these particular birds around the tree for a couple of minutes but they were clearly getting more and more wary of me, and being on a timer both for the survey itself (20 minutes / 500 metres) and to finish up and get to the meeting point with the group, so I had to give up this particular opportunity.
I had 18 species on this survey, a really good result – we probably average around 11-12.
Yarra Bend
From the Riverbankers site I trekked up past Dights Falls toward the Victorian Indigenous Nurseries Co-operative (VINC), the meeting point for the Unimelb group. On the way I took the chance to snap some galahs and long-billed corellas that settled on a nearby oval to feed. Being a large inner-Melbourne park you’d probably expect to see cockatoo species in Yarra Bend far more often than I find is the case – it’s mostly smaller parrots.
They weren’t too bothered by me, so I lay in the grass for about five minutes while they fed. I got one particularly nice moment of interaction between a couple of the corellas.
Wildlife Conservation Society (Tuesday walk)
The Wildlife Conservation Society and I walked a loop starting from VINC, down along the river to the flying fox colony, underneath the Eastern Freeway and back past the casting pond and Thomas Embley to the end. We started at around 9.50.
We immediately had a strong presence of rainbow lorikeets and noisy miners, as you’d expect here, and a pied currawong happily sat and posed for us on a low branch. Eastern rosella were heard but not seen, we saw two kookaburra on a distant branch, and a crested pigeon sat and posed on a fence for quite a long time while I discussed my love of doves and imitated their courtship display. A magpie-lark walked right up to within a metre of the group, almost as though it was impatiently trying to get past us. Two galahs flew in front of us, fairly low, drawing some awe from the group.
Heading along the nursery ridge we managed to find a kookaburra that was happy to sit reasonably close while we watched. A couple of welcome swallows circled overhead, but otherwise it was unusually quiet for birds, with nothing feeding in the casuarinas or eucalypts here. We did, however, accidentally flush the swamp wallaby that has been in this area for the past couple of weeks – it bounded down the hill and further down the track we’d be taking.
Doubling back, as we entered the conservation reserve we had a great cormorant fly overhead.
There’s a steep gravel drive here, presumably used by ParksVic at the flying fox and microbat rehabilitation site that they have here. We paused at this spot while I talked about the importance of tree hollows, particularly for many of the parrot species in the park, and the fierce competition that was already starting between rainbow and musk lorikeets, eastern rosellas and red-rumped parrots for prime real estate.
Right on cue, almost as if to punctuate my point about the start of breeding season, we had two rainbow lorikeets decide to copulate within clear view of the group.
The river was very quiet today, as it often is through this section. I heard a single dusky moorhen somewhere on the water but couldn’t see it. On the other side, both a grey butcherbird and red-rumped parrot were calling. We flushed a crimson rosella in this section as well, and encountered our first small birds of the day – a few superb fairywren.
Not on the Yarra but above us in the trees were two chatty maned duck, both a male and a female, keeping a wary eye on us while also checking out hollows for themselves. I’m not sure whether there’s anything big enough in this section for a duck, but if there is, they’ll find it.
As we approached the river bend we caught up with the swamp wallaby, who continued along the trail, and also ran into our first white-browed scrubwren, spotted pardalote and red-browed finch, none of which the group were able to see, unfortunately. Some but not all also found a brown thornbill in this same section.
What we were all able to see, happily, was the star of the morning – the hundreds-to-thousands of grey-headed flying fox that camp in this section of Yarra Bend each night. We tried to minimise our impact by taking the less populated fire track, walking slowly and quietly and avoiding stopping to stand underneath them. We had binoculars, so from a range that the bats seemed comfortable with, we stood and observed them for around ten minutes.
Though it was only the half-way point of the loop, by this point we were very low on time and also moving into far less interesting parts of the park, being mostly cleared space for recreation. There were a couple of Australian magpies feeding at the casting pond, but otherwise the north side of the freeway was completely silent.
We ended up with 28 species across 90 minutes, a bit low for this part of the park not a bad result!
Wildlife Conservation Society (Thursday walk)
We took a very similar track on Thursday morning with a different group, the primary goal being to find the grey-headed flying foxes, as well as any birds along the way.
I arrived super wet after spending a couple of minutes lying on the ground photographing a few welcome swallow that were perched on a stick and preening, very close to where the long-billed corellas had been feeding on Tuesday. A small flock of yellow-tailed black-cockatoo passed over toward the south.
We started at VINC and again had both noisy miners and rainbow lorikeets present in every direction. Two maned ducks (and a very duck-shaped stick) fed in a fenced-off section of the Yarra Public Golf Course. I stood and talked about native pigeons for five minutes, hoping that the crested pigeons that are frequently here would join, and then right as we were giving up and moving on one of the group members spotted a single individual sitting up in a tree.
The nursery ridge was quiet. A magpie-lark fed in the long grass here, as is common, and we had a red wattlebird stop and give us a decent look up in a tree top. Circling back, the number of cresties had grown to five, and they’d dropped down to feed in the grass.
The same as Tuesday, a single galah flew across the track to give everybody a look and that was the only one that we saw. I heard but couldn’t locate a long-billed corella somewhere over the golf course.
Down the hill we had plenty more rainbow lorikeets, including a couple that were happily sitting within a metre of some of the group, feeding away in the wattle.
From the ParksVic station the track runs along the river to the eastern freeway, the right bank being on the west and northern side of the river. The western section is usually the more active one, and this was true on Tuesday, but other than lorikeets it was very quiet on this walk. A couple of eastern rosella came in and sat nice and high, giving everybody a decent view; a sulphur-crested cockatoo called but wasn’t seen, and we had a few dusky moorhen along different parts of the bank. That was about it though.
The northern section, by contrast, was buzzing. Drawn in by red-rumped parrot calls, we found a mixed flock of spotted pardalote, brown thornbill, superb fairywren, white-browed scrubwren, silvereye and, best of all, a male golden whistler nice and low. Unfortunately he was gone in a flash and I don’t think that the whole group got a chance to see him, but for my money that’s the best bird across both trips. Cheers to Tom for spotting him and letting everybody know.
From here we again took the fire track through the grey-headed flying fox colony, discussing their history in the park and trying to minimise our disturbance – an impossible thing to achieve perfectly, unfortunately, but we do our best.
After we passed under the eastern freeway a grey butcherbird was seen but not heard – a bizarre inversion! We took a slightly longer route along the river, not finding much other than an opportunity to view a pied currawong.
Looping back past the hospital we had magpies feeding in the grass near the casting pool, a great cormorant overhead, and finally a welcome swallow catching its lunch over a field.
We again had 28 species on Thursday, though a slightly different mix – no kookaburra (though one member heard one and has it on his list), ibis or red-browed finch, but we did get whistler, silvereye and dusky moorhen, so a pretty good trade overall.