I moved to Australian Capital Territory at the end of May. It’s pretty much all new ground to me – I don’t know any places and don’t know any people – so I joined the Canberra Ornithologists Group (COG). This morning was my first outing with them.

We walked a section of the Murrumbidgee River between Gordon and Bonython, from Point Hut Crossing to Pine Island. The trail runs alongside the creek through mostly open woodland, a good mix of eucalypts, casuarinas, extensive grevillea plantings and a lot of blackberry. Beyond a narrow corridor on either side of the river the land is heavily cleared, and I learned that it was earmarked to be a town centre of Canberra previously (and may yet be).

We met at the southern end of the trail at 9.00, having Australian king-parrot, crimson rosella, pied currawong and a red wattlebird while waiting in the carpark. We crossed a small bridge over an inlet to a lagoon and were immediately surrounded by both blackberry and some native raspberry. Unsurprisingly the little birds were everywhere through here: initially white-browed scrubwren and brown thornbill in large numbers, but eventually we also found superb fairywren, silvereye, eastern spinebill, weebill and buff-rumped thornbill as well. A spotted pardalote came in reasonably low behind the group and gave us a good look.

A few of us heard red-browed finch here as well, though they were not as abundant as usual through here (apparently). By lagging behind I was lucky enough to see a white-eared honeyeater climb right to the top of a casuarina and perch there, watching us. A grey shrikethrush called intermittently.

As we climbed out of blackberry country we added yellow-rumped thornbill to our list, and some of the group were able to get a very good look at a female golden whistler. A pair of brown thornbills were feeding in the needle-eaf mistletoe which was flowering in a casuarina. Down on the river itself we had two black swans feeding and preening, and we added a common blackbird by call. I saw a couple of birds hawking but at too big a distance to ID them.

The hawking birds were probably grey fantail. We left them off but almost immediately entered a very healthy patch of woolly grevillea, some of them flowering, with a large flock of primarily striated thornbill but also more buff-rumped, brown, white-browed scrubwren and eastern spinebill. We heard a grey fantail here now too and were able to add it to the list.

Noisy miner alarm call alerted us to the presence of a raptor being chased by two pied currawong. It was certainly a tachyspiza sp. of one kind or another. Backlit, flying quickly above and away from us, nobody got a very good look. My impression was of a slender bird, a collared sparrowhawk, while our group leader Michael D thought it was too large and so settled on brown goshawk. We left this one unresolved.

While debating the raptor we also had the gutteral squawk of a white-faced heron down by the water, and the loud screech of a sulphur-crested cockatoo overhead. Two Pacific black ducks flew downriver then, a minute later, doubled back up past us in the other direction, bringing with them a little pied cormorant.

As we descended toward Pine Island a couple of galahs went overhead to the east and a masked lapwing followed the course upriver set by the ducks and cormorant. Somewhere in the distance – further than we were going to walk that day – a little corella called out. I got a brief glimpse of two wood ducks as they flew by.

We ended the checklist there. Those should have been the last birds of the day, but on the walk back we managed a couple more: with the sun fully out two wedge-tailed eagles soared high above, circling on the thermals. Back at the carpark there were two dusky moorhen down in the lagoon – residents there, apparently, though I didn’t notice them when we first arrived.

A lovely first outing with the COG, who were very friendly and welcoming, with a lot of expertise not only about the birds but about the history of the area.