I’m on a birdwatching trip up to the Mallee, and will be making my first visits to Murray-Sunset National Park and crossing over into South Australia.

On the way I thought that I would stop in Bendigo to try to get a photo of a brush bronzewing. I was last here in early July and things were very quiet then, but a lot of the honeyeaters have returned to Victoria so I was also hoping to see birds like tawny-crowned and purple-gaped honeyeaters for the first time since January.

Driving in yesterday I stopped briefly at Castlemaine Botanic Gardens, where I didn’t find the famous resident powerful owl but still had a lovely walk, finding plenty of crimson rosellas, both sulphur-crested cockatoo and yellow-tailed black-cockatoo, lots of wood ducks and common bronzewing.

I also took an impulse stop at Crusoe Reservoir, where again the famous resident eluded me (no owlet-nightjar) but otherwise it was absolutely pumping: there were Horsfield’s bronze-cuckoos and loads of pallid cuckoos, white-winged trillers, olive-backed orioles, a sacred kingfisher, a couple of crested shrike-tits, both black-faced and white-bellied cuckooshrikes, and even a black-fronted dotterel that ran around on a forest trail ahead of me for some distance.

I’m fairly upset about missing the focus on this pallid cuckoo shot – despite hearing them constantly they mostly stayed up in the canopy, the angle and sky making for some fairly ugly photos, but this would have made it all worth it.

I got 48 species after a lap of the main reservoir, my second best result here – and easily could have broken 50 if there had been more on the water, I saw no ducks at all!

Old Distillery Dam

I stayed in Bendigo overnight, slept poorly, but still managed to drag myself out of bed at 5.00 to get into the park before sunrise. I went to the Old Distillery Dam, intending to start here before visiting Diamond Dove Dam and coming back into town via either Huntly Streamside Reserve or Ascot.

There was a lot of activity in the dawn chorus: yellow-plumed honeyeaters were the dominant but there were a few brown-headed around here as well; buff-rumped thornbill, silvereye and, of course, chatty little weebill. Both white-backed and black-backed magpies were out on the grass feeding.

I also heard both common and brush bronzewings calling almost as soon as I got out of my car. I spent my whole time here this morning, around 2 1/2 hours, trying to pursue them, to absolutely no luck. They were advertising constantly but their calls travel such distances and sound so non-specific that I always find it hard to locate them. I was almost completely unsuccessful: on two occasions I saw a single bird fly past, not flushed by me but apparently just moving through the area, and otherwise got nothing. Certainly no photograph. At this point I think I can call brush bronzewings a nemesis bird!

I don’t know that I saw any but there were grey currawong calling, and both Australian and little ravens. At one spot where I thought I paused in hope of a bronzewing I instead got a small mixed flock of superb fairywrens and grey fantail. At the same time, somewhere nearby a willie wagtail called.

There were a few other things. I got my first shining bronze-cuckoo and black-eared cuckoo of the trip, there were a few rufous whistlers, I eventually tracked down white-eared, white-plumed and fuscous honeyeaters, and yellow thornbill. But it was honestly pretty quiet – only 27 species is surely one of my worst results at this spot.

After a couple of hours of intermittent rain it started to come down more heavily, the calling stopped, and I left without visiting any other spots.

A second trip later in the day yielded a few more birds (yellow-rumped thornbill, golden whistler, fan-tailed cuckoo) but this time I didn’t even hear either bronzewing species.