Christine P, Jane L, Claire K, Archer C, Aidan P and I met in the chill at the southern end of Quarries Park today for a Merri Creek wander. At our meeting point we had a magpie on nest, rainbow lorikeets and noisy miners chattering in the trees.

The plan was to head up along the trail past Quarries Park to Hall Reserve, then back again. We’d taken all of a step when one of the specialty birds for this part of Yarra, a grey currawong, called a few times and then flew into view as it headed to the north west. We kept hearing what was presumably this bird for a while afterwards.

Heading along the trail we had chestnut teals in the creek, a grey butcherbird observing from on high, and common blackbird, brown thornbill, white-browed scrubwren and eastern spinebill feeding in flowering midstory. A little pied cormorant shot up the river, being harassed by a noisy miner, red wattlebirds called from every direction, and a single crested pigeon sat on an electric wire.

Pausing where the creek trail rejoins the main path we added rock dove and common starling, red-rumped parrot, musk lorikeet, silver gull, and a single Australian white ibis heading north.

There has been pretty extensive revegetation efforts though this section, both in neglected riparian sections along the creek but also in converting large sections of lawn to planting, which should hopefully be terrific for the birds over the coming years.

Moving along the creek we found a Pacific black duck, dusky moorhen and a Eurasian coot down in the water, eastern rosella flew overhead and there were plenty more grey butcherbird chattering away.

At the frog pond just past Quarries Jane somehow spotted a tawny frogmouth that was 50m and multiple trees away. We stood there discussing tawnies and watching this distant bird for a couple of minutes before looking up and realising we were standing directly under two more, roosting only a couple of metres above our heads.

Standing under two tawny frogmouths

As we reached Hall Reserve we had a very novel encounter with a couple of Australian king-parrots: the birds were moving around in the canopy of the eucalypt and seemingly bathing in the collected dew. They’d go from branch to branch and were absolutely drenched in water but kept up this activity for the ten minutes we watched them. I’ve never seen this before.

Climbing up the path toward Hall we got good looks at a couple of eastern rosellas, added galahs, and only I heard a masked lapwing. We didn’t hear it again, and I’m choosing to believe it was swooping runners at a nearby track. We heard but couldn’t identify a corella.

Good looks at an eastern rosella

Hall was pretty uneventful. More miners, musk and rainbow lorikeets, the king-parrots, magpie. We did find our first spotted dove here, then two, then eventually seven as they all arrived at once to a house roof.

Turning back and we had a couple of little pied cormorants flying upstream, more grey butcherbird and then calls from our first spotted pardalote of the day.

Back at the frog pond most of the group stood and watched three king-parrots as they circled again, and again, and again, two birds apparently chasing another one, while Archer tried to track down the source of a rosella call that he heard. Luckily for us they kept looping past because eventually (and I apologise but I’ve forgotten who called it first!) we realised it was actually two juvenile crimson rosellas that had been chasing the king-parrot! Another weird parrot encounter!

After two hours we got back to Quarries, where Jane continued home and the rest of us took a quick detour up the hill into the park proper. More red-rumped parrots, pied currawong, pigeons, rainbow lorikeets in here. Our last new bird of the day was when we were finalising the list: two long-billed corella that flew directly over our heads just in time to be recorded.

37 species overall, including three that Christine and I saw on our walk up (willie wagtail, superb fairywren, white-plumed honeyeater), the most notable being grey currawong, crimson rosella, Australian king-parrot, tawny frogmouth, and galah. We didn’t see maned duck, nor the winter visitors red-browed finch, silvereye and yellow-tailed black-cockatoo.