A pardalote in a snow gum tree

While parts of the States enjoyed real snow in the days leading up to Christmas...

US Radar map - 23 December 2014 (Intellicast)

...Matt and I enjoyed the Snowy Mountain off-season: when the skiers leave the slopes, in come the birds (and birders). Near the NSW-Victoria border, we camped in true Aussie Christmas spirit...

Lounging at our campsite by the river (Corona and field guide in hand)

...or at least trying to. Between an unexpected stomach ailment and some stormy weather, our planned 4-day camping trip became a stopover in Canberra plus 2 days of camping. But that still left plenty of time for some quality birdwatching.

In Canberra, we did manage to see heaps of Galahs, magpies, sulphur-crested cockatoos, and some green birds with blue wings (stop the car, honey!!) that looked a heck of a lot like turquoise parrots... but were probably something more common, like juvenile crimson rosellas.

But the Snowy Mountains gave us the most fun, with several new species sightings. On the first day at our campsite (the Diggings), we took a leisurely 5-km walk to the east along the Thredbo River, enjoying a picnic lunch under the shade trees to a chorus of birds, including white-eared and yellow-faced honeyeaters.

Walk along the Thredbo River

Yellow-faced honeyeater calling near the Thredbo Diggings campground

An alert kangaroo

 We spotted a pair of kangaroos on the trail, avoided feeding the cute maned and Pacific black ducks, and ended the day surrounded by choruses of kookaburras and striated pardalotes.

Foraging duck family

A striated pardalote calling from a snow gum tree

The highlight of the trip was the Dead Horse Gap trail, which we tackled on day three. Each year, this gap through the mountains serves as a funnel for millions of migrating birds and insects.

Map of the area, showing Dead Horse Gap

 The trail itself leads up through the snow gum forest...

...and into the high alpine grasses.

Nerd alert #357

View from the summit

On the way up we spotted lots of yellow-faced honeyeaters, a couple crimson roesllas, loads of ravens, some vibrant flame robins, and a few grey fantails.

Male flame robin singing high in a tree

A grey fantail flitting and singing in the trees

So to sum up, we had a productive Christmas adventure, spotting:

Twelve galahs perching

Eleven ravens circling

Ten maned ducks wattling

Nine ducklings groveling

Eight kookaburras laughing

Seven rosellas singing

Six yellow-faced honeyeaters

Five fairy wren breeders

Four fantails

Three flame robins

Two kangaroos

And a pardalote in a snow gum tree.

30-species walk

With the sun high in the sky, a healthy brekkie of yogurt and muesli in my belly, and Matt at work, I set out for a walk in Centennial Park.

My walk through the park (Google Maps).

I begin by travelling along the narrow strip of park between Kensington Ponds and Allison Road. A father and his kids are admiring some birds on the other side of the pond, and I peer through my binoculars to see what they are - Eurasian coots, Pacific black ducks, and Australian white ibises. These are all birds commonly sighted in the Park, so I move on, past some starlings pecking in the grass.

Trees line the path, standing between me and the road. An unfamiliar call from one of these trees prompts a closer examination. I stand still in the shade of the tree, awaiting a movement or sound from within. Another call from the bird directs my gaze to a flash of red and green-gray moving through the foliage. Through my binoculars I see the red ear-coverts, black head, grey throat and green body of an Australasian Figbird - my first ever sighting! According to my bird book, Sydney is at the very bottom of the species range, but the species is mostly sedentary. I wonder why I haven't seen them here before.

Can you spot the Australasian figbird?

In a flash, the figbird flies out across the busy road towards the Randwick Royal Racecourse, and I enter Centennial Park via a footbridge over the ponds, where murky waters conceal the movements of massive fish and little swimming turtles. But I'm here today for the birds, so I move on.

I'm now in the bush and thickets between Kensington Ponds and Grand Drive, which is a less frequented area of the park (for people) but - I am hoping - I nice quiet shelter for birds. Rustlings and chirps on the ground capture my attention, but after several minutes of silent waiting, I move on. Some pied currawongs draw my attention to a large bird on a low eucalyptus branch.

A roosting channel-billed cuckoo in Centennial Park

Through my binoculars I examine the expression of the channel-billed cuckoo. I've only ever seen them in flight before, chasing - or being chased by - other species. Here, hanging out alone in a tree, I can appreciate its distinctive beak, red eye and beautiful black and white tail feathers. As I snap photos of the cuckoo, figbirds join the same tree and start singing. The cuckoo looks annoyed.

A channel-billed cuckoo and Australasian figbird share the same tree

The figbirds sing. Now that I can identify their call, I hear them in multiple places in the trees along the pond.

An Australasian figbird calling in Centennial Park

I press on, past birthday parties and screaming children, to the spot by the pond where I saw the father and his kids. The coots are gone. An australasian darter fans his wings on the rocks, as a turtle sneaks ever nearer. A little pied cormorant joins in the fun, and the more common ibises and Pacific black ducks officially feel like the middle children. Common mynas swoop by, being their usual garrulous selves.

Darter and cormorant and ibis oh my!

I can feel the skin of my neck burning now, and I daub on some sunscreen. A chorus of butcher birds stops me in my tracks, and I spot them in a tree. Despite their abundance, these birds can be quite elusive. When I have seen them it has often been in urban settings - sitting atop telephone wires and rooftoop antennas. It's nice to see them singing in a tree, up close through my binoculars. But they don't sit still for long. My camera battery dies.

I move on across Grand Drive, to the cricket field. There are now many more people around. Lots of birds are pecking at the ground on the edge of the field, next to a little shaded gully. A kookaburra sits strangely still in the middle of the field and I wonder if he is hurt. Starlings, pigeons and magpie larks abound. A willie wagtail puts on a show, darting back and forth between the ground and a tree, sometime splaying his wings in the grass, sometimes catching insects in mid-air. A family of superb fairy-wrens - two breeding males and five or six females and juveniles - emerges from the underbrush and hops across the grass into the distance. Two Australian pelicans swirl overhead, headed - I presume - for Busby's Pond. Butcherbirds can be heard to the west.

I walk along the path, past a flock of magpies, towards Busby's Pond. Crested pigeons purr and noisy miners yawp. I walk east along the south side of Busby's Pond. A pair of lorikeets flies over my head and plays in a nearby tree. On the pond, purple swamphens and dusky moorhens swim with Pacific black and hardhead ducks. Ibises and australasian darters roost in trees. A little pied cormorant dries his wings next to some pelicans and domestic geese.

Welcome swallows in Vernon Pavilion

Australian ravens are calling overhead, and I snap a few pictures. I stop for lunch at Vernon Pavilion, enjoying my hot dog under the welcome swallows, who roost in the pavilion's eaves and build mud nests high in the rafters. Black swans and silver gulls can be heard out on the Duck Pond, where little black cormorants dive for fish.

I travel east above the Duck Pond, to the noisy Lachlan Swamp, where hundreds of flying foxes cling to the treetops above. I follow a pair of grey butcherbirds through the swamp, being careful to avoid the yellow flying fox droppings that occasionally fall. Some noisy miners join in. I linger in the swamps, pressing my luck with the flying fox droppings (one drops dangerously close to me), with the hopes of seeing a tawny frogmouth. Because they are active at night and camouflaged during the day, I have never seen one. Today will not be the day.

In the swamps - can you spot the grey butcherbird?

When I emerge from the swamps, water falls in drops from the sky. Grey clouds loom overhead. Usually my faithful currawongs sound their alarm to tell me the rain is coming. I suppose they don't frequent the swamps. Picnickers pack up their blankets and food, and a line of cars builds up along Grand Drive as I hop from tree to tree to shield myself from the rain, which now falls more heavily. I am not in any hurry. It will take me about 30 minutes to walk home, but my binoculars and camera will stay dry in my bag.

Close encounters of the bird kind

When a recent bushwalk in Marramarra National Park failed to produce any bird sightings (it was a rather warm day), I decided to look closer to home, in the scrub brush above Coogee Beach. If you want to commune with the local avian population, head straight to the stand of trees and rocky lookout between Coogee Beach and Gordon's Bay, and follow the worn paths from the rocks until you're surrounded entirely by the bush.

Off the beaten path

I encountered a pretty good selection of birds from my roost in the thicket, from a nest of immature superb fairy wrens, to a flock of busy starlings, to lonely red wattlebirds and magpie larks.

A chubby magpie lark

I made good friends with this red wattlebird (not usually so friendly)

But the highlight of my adventure was this little guy - a suberb fairy wren in his happy blue breeding plumage, just above Gordon's Bay.

My first sighting of a breeding male superb fairy wren!

He was nice enough to let me photograph him as he hopped from branch to branch

If, like thousands of Australians, you're were out walking near Coogee Beach last week, you might have glimpsed me through the foliage and wondered what in the heck I was doing (I'm thinking of you, tall Dutch-looking girl with the blue polka-dot shirt). Maybe one day you'll understand.

When the birding must wait

Leave it to two Americans to plan a trip into the Hunter Valley on one of the hottest, driest days of the year. As the temperature crept over 40 C, we guzzled the wines - mostly Shirazes, Chardonnays, Semillons and Verdelhos - hoping the blazing sun would spare the bottles we kept shoving under the car seats. The highlight of the day was this approachable and gorgeous peacock, one of several keeping cool under the shade trees at Krinklewood Winery.

Peacock at Krinklewood Winery, Hunter Valley (NSW)

According to the owners, the birds "just arrived one day when we were building the Krinklewood cellar door." They still don't know where the magical birds came from, but you can catch a glimpse most days if you care to make a trip (the wine alone is well worth the 2 hour journey from Sydney). Maybe they were attracted by the egg-shaped fermenters these biodynamic growers use (we got the unofficial tour).

Apparently they used to have peahens as well, but they were eaten by foxes. Also spotted on our trip into the Hunter: 2 unidentified green birds, a group of striated pardalotes (my first sighting!), and some strange unidentified sounds.

On an ordinary day I might have traipsed into the fields after the sweet melodic tunes... but with sweat literally dripping from every inch of my skin, and lots of wines to take down before the end of the day, even this bird aficionado decided to save the birding for another day.

The best news? With many more birds left to see in the Hunter, I might just have to make a few more trips...

A unique bird community on Wansey Road

I really ought to make a bird map of my neighborhood. It's amazing how accurately I can predict the species I will see within a given city block. I know that if I want to see New Holland Honeyeaters, for example, I need to take a walk down Wansey Road in late September. If I want to see lorikeets, I head out around sunset along any number of streets southeast of Centennial Park. To see grey butcherbirds, I take an early morning stroll from Belmore Road to Centennial Park. The path just south of Coogee Beach is ideal for wattlebird-watching, though I can point out a few trees around Randwick where I often hear them calling. For yellow-tailed black cockatoos, I head to the northern edge of Centennial Park in early winter. There's a healthy population of Common Mynas on Waratah Avenue. For welcome swallows, head to Alison Park at dusk.

Long story short, wherever there is green space in this city, there are birds. But less obvious is the surprisingly high fidelity of different species (or of individual birds) to a single strip of land.

Wansey Rd. runs directly along the western edge of the Royal Randwick Racecourse.

Image: Google Maps.

One of my favorite local examples is the unique community of birds that shares a stand of trees running along the western edge of the Royal Randwick Racecourse. If you take the path along Wansey Road on a spring day, as I sometimes do, you can expect to see the following birds (from most to least common):

• Common mynas
• House sparrows
• Welcome swallows
• Rock doves
• Spotted doves
• Pacific black ducks
• Crested pigeons
• New Holland Honeyeaters
• Red-whiskered bulbuls
• Kookaburras

I saw all of these birds today (and others), within a matter of minutes. At this time of year, about 30 minutes after sunset, you will also see flocks of noisy corellas in this area, making a racket in the tall eucalyptus trees nearby.

So what is it that draws this unique community of birds to this particular strip of land? It's a community I've not encountered elsewhere in Sydney.

No doubt the Racecourse grounds play a key role. They provide tall grasses and a thick protected thicket, plenty of shade and roosting spots, nearby fruiting and flowing plants (like lantanas, bottlebrush and grevillias), and a water source in the form of an open water tank - all tucked safely away behind a barbed wire fence.

Mynas, crested pigeons, and house sparrows share space in this dense lantana thicket.

Spotted and rock doves prefer roosting spots in nearby residential eaves and under this man-made shed (you can see them on a perch if you look closely).

The Pacific black ducks spend their time on the rim of this large water tank (photo taken February 2014).

 New Holland honeyeaters and Red-whiskered bulbuls spend their time in these trees (photo on right taken November 2013).

Corellas occasionally visit the tallest eucalyptus trees (these are on nearby High Street).

Kookaburras perch in these trees to hunt the insects and critters down below (can you spot the kookaburra in this photo?).

And welcome swallows feed on the insects overhead. (This is the only shot I have of welcome swallows. It was taken in February 2014 near Alison Park, about a 10-minute walk from Wansey Rd).

I suspect the birds on Wansey Road are able to live together in a diverse "man-made" ecosystem because the species all fill separate niches. But it does leave me with many questions. For example, to what degree are different species competing for limited resources? Are the mynas, pigeons and sparrows leading to the spread of the invasive lantanas? How will this impact other species (including insects) in the long run? What does it mean that this community exists near a busy road? Is noise pollution a detriment to breeding? Do the Racecourse managers value this diverse ecosystem? What would happen if they decided to develop the property?

The more birdwatching I do, the more I appreciate how unique all the little micro-ecosystems around me are, and the more questions I have.

Return of the channel-billed cuckoos

After wintering in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, channel-billed cuckoos usually make their first appearance in Sydney around mid-September. I caught my first (and only) sight of one today over Centennial Park, calling out in its distinctive squawk, with several currawongs close on its tail. I didn't get any pictures.

Despite their rise in Sydney over the past 30 years, and their frequent inclusion on lists of commonly sighted backyard birds, surprisingly little is known about channel-billed cuckoos. This may be because they are brood parasites, laying their eggs in the nests of other birds (like currawongs) whose young they easily out-compete. Or maybe it's simply because no one has made it their life's work to study this species. With more bird species than ecologists in Australia, it's no wonder why we still know so little about species ranges; patterns of distribution; breeding cycles; and diversity - in appearance, behaviour, genetics, bird calls. (As some wise people - like Bill Bryson - have noted, "it's not a biodiversity crisis, it's a taxonomist crisis.")

I have compared birdwatching and astronomy in a previous post. It's no coincidence that these are two of the rare disciplines where amateurs can (and do) play integral roles. When the subject under study is as vast as a galaxy, a continent, or a branch in the tree of life, scientists need all the help they can get.

I have an image of my retired self setting up bird monitoring equipment and making a go of it as an amateur researcher. I wake up early in the mornings and relax in my favorite bird hide as the fog lifts. I find pet projects and publish papers as an "independent scholar" (like these guys). And I contribute in some significant way to making sense of the vast unknown.

Addendum: Birds of St. James's and Hyde Parks

As an update, I did see the pelicans of St. James's Park today:

Pelicans of St. James's Park

And on my 10-minute walk through the park (this time on the south side of the lake), I added the following birds to my list:

Great cormorant

Red-breasted goose

Ross's goose (not to be confused with a snow goose)

Hawaiian goose

Barnacle goose

Common starling

This brings my bird list for St. James's Park to a whopping 24 species, and it proves my point that the park is a good way to see lots of different birds with minimal effort.

Also of interest are some new sightings today in Hyde Park:

This Grey heron (juvenile) let me get really close.

He was having a slight identity crisis though:

a flock of Canada and Greylag geese...

...with our Grey heron

This Great crested grebe was hard to photograph, since

he kept diving under the water for long periods of time

Tufted ducks - the female is a pale base to bill variant

Egyptian geese are common in London, but it's

less common to see a whole family like this one

This Graylag goose has a black-tipped beak

(perhaps a clue of a domestic ancestry?)

A Common Swift soars like a kite,

making sharp dips and circles in the sky

This little blackbird sang me a nice song

(more on blackbird songs later)

Birds of London: St. James's Park

I arrived in London last week for a 3-week business trip. I knew I would have some extra time for sightseeing, and I should have guessed that I would end up spending a lot of that time birdwatching.

My birdwatching jaunts around London are so fruitful that I thought I would do a series of posts on London birding. My first few posts will focus on some nice birding spots I have found in the greater London area so far.

St. James's Park

Thanks to the thirst of kings (chiefly Henry VIII) for land to serve as hunting grounds, nearly 40% of greater London is now green space, making it the greenest city of its size in the world. Casual walks through Hyde Park, Regents Park, Greenwich Park, or Richmond Park (of these, I have only explored Hyde Park) will no doubt introduce you to some delightful bird species, from black-billed magpies to carrion crows, and from wood pigeons to mallard ducks. But if you want to see a wide range of species in just a small area of parkland, I would suggest taking a stroll through St. James's Park, near Buckingham Palace. For whatever reason, St. James's has a staggering diversity of wetland species for a park of its size.

Waterfowl of St. James's Park - part I

(click on image to enlarge)

Waterfowl of St. James's Park - part II

Skirt the north side of the lake in St. James's Park to see informational plaques describing 47 species found in the environs. Catch glimpses of many of these species near the grassy shore, where they no doubt await food from tourists, who are not prohibited from feeding them. The official guide to birds in the Royal Parks (http://www.royalparks.org.uk/__documents/main/docs/rpbirdsinfoweb.pdf) gives a complete list of feeding DOs and DON'Ts. (I for one don't support feeding the birds, though I do rather admire the Italian people for selling birdseed with birth control in Venice's Piazza San Marco. Anyone's who's been there will know why.)

Birds photographed in greater London in the course of 2 days

(over 20 species total). Of these, a lot were spotted in St. James's Park.

In a 15-minute walk through the Park, I saw 13 different species of waterfowl, plus 4 woodland/grassland species:

1. Hooded merganser (m.)
2. Mallard (m)
3. Mallard (f)
4. Egyptian goose
5. Common pochard (m)
6. Tufted duck (f)
7. Tufted duck (m)
8. Eurasian coot
9. Eurasian coot (juv)
10. Common moorhen
11. Common shelduck (m)
12. Eurasian wigeon (m)
13. Common pochard (f)
14. Red crested pochard (m)
17. Bar-headed goose
18. Mute swan
19. Mute swan (juv)
20. Greylag goose
21. Wood pigeon
22. Rock dove (common pigeon)
26. Blackbird
27. Blackbird (juv)
34. Carrion crow
(I will write about the other pictured birds in later posts.)

While I was surprised to see some of the non-native species, such as Egyptian geese, the bird distribution maps in my field guide tell me these species can be found in the area year-round. There were a few surprising sightings, however...

One surprise was the Hooded merganser (1), a North American species rarely sighted in Europe. Wikipedia tells me that most of the Hooded mergansers in the UK are presumed to have escaped from captivity, but I couldn't help but wonder whether this one might be one of the genuine vagrants. The possibility excites this bird nerd!

Another exciting sighting was the Eurasian wigeon (12), which (more reputable sources, including my field guide, tell me) is quite common in Britain in the winter months but only rarely remains this far south through the summer breeding months. Some, but not all, distribution maps show a few isolated islands of year-round residency in the south of England, and my field guide tells me that most of the birds that summer here do not breed. I'm dying to find out if this one will breed.... but either way, it's still quite rewarding to encounter a new species.

Finally, if you do go through St. James's park, don't miss the 6 resident pelicans. Pelicans were originally brought to the Park in the 17th century as an ambassadorial gift from Russia. In 2013, three additional pelicans were gifted from the City of Prague. I haven't seen the pelicans yet! But I hear they get daily public feedings of fish from 2:30-3:00.