Eastern Yellow Robins

YELLOW ROBINS Eopsaltria australis

I set out for my walk this in the mist and fog morning. The fog often sits along the railway line at Kilmore East 'til late in the morning. The line runs between the hills and so provides a perfect corridor for low lying fog.

It was very quiet this morning as it usually is on these foggy days, the moisture holds the sound in.

As I walked, very quickly the mist began to lift. As it did so the birds awoke. Suddenly there was movement and there was the sound of birds calling. Within twenty metres of where I was standing, I could now see,  silver eyes, fairy wrens, red-browed finches, a scarlet robin and yellow robins. A little further out, there were magpies, corellas, cockatoos, crimson rosellas, tree creepers, shrike thrushes and others moving too quickly for me to note.

The yellow robins were particularly active. They are such beautiful birds. Their name, Eopsaltria  is derived from the ancient Greek and in translation means something like singer at dawn. How appropriate that was on this beautiful autumn morning. The name yellow robin was apparently given to these little birds by the early settlers of Australia. They are certainly similar to the British robins.

They are inquisitive birds and today they sat quite confidently, watching what I was doing. Such beautiful animals.

 What a beautiful morning it was!

Litytle Pied Cormorant

LITTLE LIED CORMORANT 

( Phalacrocorax melanoleucos)

It is a wonderful name, from the Greek phalakros bald + korak-, korax raven — plus from the Ancient Greek words melano- "black", and leukos "white". There you go!




It was a dull day today. A morning walk around the Kilmore Reservoir,  met with very little bird activity. The reservoir, now in the middle of the Kilmore Golf course, was once the water supply and the swimming pool for Kilmore people. It is still a beautiful place, very close to the town centre. It is pleasing to see it used by residents as a place to walk, summer and winter. There is a nice coexistence between golfers and others.



The bird life is plentiful. It changes from season to season to season. In summer the corellas live in the trees and cause plenty of damage to the golf fairways as they dig up the roots of the grass. In autumn and spring the area is visited by the migratory ibis. The reservoir provides a welcome rest place on the journey.Kingfishers, missing over the summer, will soon be back





Today, a grey day, was very quiet. At about 3 o'clock, the sun came out and a few heads appeared.

A group of pied cormorants were quietly warming themselves, drying their wings on a log in the shallows.



Usually they are very wary but today I was able to get a little closer than other times. They seemed quite content to preen themselves as I crept a little closer.

 

Grey Fantail

GREY FANTAIL Rhipidura fuliginosa
 





On those grey days when many birds seem to be sitting quietly, not showing themselves, I can always find a fantail or two to watch.  Perhaps I should rephrase that statement a little. On grey days when many birds seem to be sitting quietly, the grey fantails will always be about looking to find an audience for their aerial antics.

They will flitter around before alighting on a branch to have a good look at what is going on. They will then  'show off' their aerobic skills,  twisting  and turning after insects around the tops of shrubs and trees. Returning to a twig they will chatter away, telling the watcher just how well they have performed. It is almost as though they are happy to have an audience to watch what they do.







They may be common little birds but are certainly one of the best known of the birds of the bush and in our gardens.

Corellas

LONG BILLED AND LITTLE CORELLAS

Kilmore has a love / hate relationship with corellas. Long Billed corellas,  Cacatua tenuirostris and the Little Corella, Cacatua sabguinea, are frequent visitors to the Kilmore Golf Course.

They spend early morning and evenings digging up the fairways and greens to feed upon the roots, bulbs and corms of the grasses. They congregate in large flocks and cause much damage to the course.

However when they are not feeding and  destroying the links, they provide wonderful entertainment to those of us who visit the areas around golf club.

In the mornings and evenings their calls are ear piercingly loud. They have a wonderful time swooping around the reservoir lake as they make their way to the tall trees for the night. We find it a wonderful concert  as we walk each evening.

In the morning, they reverse the procedures, beginning their day with raucous and resonant calls as they swoop around and around the water. My daughter complains constantly of the noise waking her far too early.

At the moment we seem to have flocks of both the Long Billed and the Little Corella. The long billed have distinctive pink bibs on their chests and a beak which is long and fierce looking. The beaks are, I am sure, specially designed by natural selection for digging up country golf courses.

Plovers

SPURWINGED PLOVERS

I have watched a flock of plovers, Vanellus novaehollandiae,  for several weeks now. They live around a small fenced dam next to the Kilmore Cricket club. On warm days, the birds move to the open area around cricket ground. Here they sit and enjoy the sun.

They are very, very wary. It is difficult to get near to them. I have tried many times, sneaking behind trees and bushes to get a little closer. There is always at least one bird standing slightly apart from the group. I can hide from the flock but every time, the sentry bird picks me out and lets out a loud karrek, karrek, karrek as it lifts from the ground. The others follow.

They do not move far, but when they do, they are even more wary and fifty metres is about as close I can get.

They are quite beautiful birds with strong black, white and brown plumage. But it is the brilliant yellow wattles which stand out, giving their faces a somewhat odd look.



Many of us have experienced the whoosh of wings, a strike from the spurred elbow and the 'karrek, karrek, karrek', when we have come too close to their eggs laid in an open nest.

I remember one year having to enter a holiday house from the rear, leaving our car out on the street, because a pair of plovers had nested in the middle of the bare gravel driveway.

Wombats

Wombats

I have lived in Kilmore for almost forty years and have not before seen wombats in the town area. There have been plenty out in the surrounding hills, but none close to the urban areas.

Last week, I was driving to the station at about 7.30 in the morning when a wombat trotted across the road from the adjacent racecourse and made its way into a flowery garden. I was a little surprised but the wombat seemed to know exactly where it was going..

The next day I was out for my walk at about 9.30, not too far from  town. I was walking along the Number Two  Creek, funny name isn't it. The creek is at the bottom of quite a steep gully, about five kilometres to the west of Kilmore. I out looking to see whatever birds were up and about. In the rushes I could hear a lot of noise and I supposed it might be a fox returning late from his nightly jaunt.

I stood still and waited a moment and  then I saw, sitting in the patch of sun outside a large burrow, two large wombats. Wombats are nocturnal animals so it is quite unusual to see them sitting out in the sunlight. 


I think wombats might be hard of hearing because  although I made a lot of noise coming through the thick, creek side growth, they hadn't noticed me at all. As well as being hard of hearing, I think wombats must be short sighted in strong sunlight. At least  these seemed to be.


Eventually I had to move and the two, moving very quickly for such round creatures, disappeared into one of the several burrows in the area.

About an hour or two later, on my return from my walk, I came across wombats once again, more of, or the same ones, I am not sure. One seemed to be an older fellow, he  was walking determinedly to wherever it was he was going. He was following a well used track and was striding along very quickly in the open. He eventually disappeared around a bend in the track.

I heard another wildlife observer say recently, that he thought the wild things were beginning to return to the towns. We certainly see many kangaroos, wallabies, hares, foxes birds, echidnas and  now wombats in and about our gardens now.

Sulphur Crested Cockatoos

Cockies

It is sometimes a little easy to look so hard for the more unusual birds on an area, that we forget the more common.

These Sulphur Crested Cockatoos,  Cacatua galerita,  are terribly noisy animals. They can give a person a fright when they screech overhead.

They seem to love my garden, especially the tall tulip tree. Here they sit for hours,  pulling the seed cones apart and dropping the litter on to the grass below. They seem too, to enjoy just nipping the new growth off the branches.

They also love the maples in the driveway. They sit there through much of the day hissing to themselves and snipping off the smaller twigs. What vandals they are!

Isabelle, the two year old who often comes to visit, thinks they are called 'Shoo cockies'. I wonder whom she has learned that from.

But oh so majestic at the same time. They have such lovely strong white plumage and brilliant crests. It is a pleasure to watch them. And the trees don't really seem to mind the constant pruning.

Yellow Robins

EASTERN YELLOW ROBINS

We have had a beautiful early autumn  morning today.  It was very still, warm with dew on the ground.  It has been hot, throughout the day; it is still 32 C now at 5 o'clock,  but the morning was just beautiful.




Along the Kilmore East train line, there is still much fruit on the blackberry bushes. This is quite unusual. I picked blackberries well over a month ago and we still have them today. In most years, the fruit ripens and is gone within a fortnight. I could see plenty of evidence that the foxes have been enjoying this late crop also.


I was very pleased to see these Eastern Yellow Robins (Eopsaltria australis), they are quite brilliant in colour. There was a pair of them chattering to each other in a black wattle tree.

They seemed very much at ease and sat watching me for several minutes before flying off to another tree to get a different angle on me.

They would cock their heads to one side to get a better look and I am sure they were asking each other who I was and what I was doing.

Fairy Wrens

FAIRY WRENS DRY AUTUMN

 
The birds around Kilmore are very quiet at the moment . Those that are about move very quickly and are hard to photograph.

I am seeing thornbills and a number of honeyeaters in my garden. The watering spots must be drying up because these birds are in and about  a small bird bath, standing amongst my tomato bushes. But they are very wary. The doors in my house squeak so it is very difficult to sneak out and catch them bathing. It is a little easier to catch them in the bush. There is more cover for me and the birds are in their own home patch. They seem more comfortable there than in the environment of my garden.







I tried a new spot yesterday. Moore's Lane. It peters out at the bottom of a deep gully. Through a gateway, along a dried up creek bed is a small area of furze, chinese scrub, spiny rushes and old black wattles . Dotted here and there are cotoneaster  shrubs, heavily laden with fruit.




Here I found a number of what my brother-in-law Tom, calls LBBs, little brown birds. They were very busy. I counted thorn bills, fairy wrens, red-browed finches, yellow faced honeyeaters, a young shrike thrush, a lone scarlet robin,  magpies, blackbirds, a rufous whistler, all in this small patch. Floating above was a wedge tailed eagle, being teased by a magpie.




It was a great little spot.

Whilst I was standing quietly, the finches were hopping around in the grass, when a sparrow hawk swooped down upon them. The long grass spoiled his aim and he flew off empty clawed. This happened about five metres from where I was watching under a tree. It was a pity the camera was pointing at the ground.

Blue Faced Honeyeaters

Blue Faced Honeyeaters

 

I was working in the garden the other day. I was mowing grass and  even above the sound of the mower,  I could hear this awful ruckus from the other end of the house.

As I came round the corner to see what was happening the noise became even louder.

In a tree I could make out a lot of commotion. Indian mynas and and blackbirds were screaming at something amongst the inner branches. As I arrived a pair of magpies joined in to join the fuss.

I put on my best school teacher's voice and called out "What's going on here?"

The mynas, blackbirds and magpies all flew off and sat on the electricity wires nearby. My school teacher voice still works, at least on birds. There they sat, quietly, fluffing up their feathers, and looking back with great interest.

Much of the noise continued. After some further peering between branches, I could make out a pair of young, blue faced honeyeaters.  For young birds, they could make a lot of noise.

With a rush of wings, another two honeyeaters flew off a higher branch in the tree, chasing away the birds still watching from the power lines.

This pair, whom I assumed to be the parents, then sat as the young ones continued with their noise making. They continued for a good ten minutes, before the parents got tired of the 'grizzling'. They flew back into  the tree, looped around a few times, gathered up the children and flew away.

Spiders

SPIDERS AND FLIES

In Kilmore we have had some beautifully mild days this week. The plentiful rain of spring and early summer has left plentiful growth in the forests and in the paddocks.

Kilmore and surrounds are a picture at the moment. As the weeks have progressed, the grass has turned a glowing gold colour, and despite the ever-present worry about fire, the paddocks and bush look beautiful.


I have walked many kilometres these last few days. There is  plenty to see; birds, flowers, new growth on trees, frogs, lizards, kangaroos, echidnas, ants, spiders and so much more.




















It is the spiders however, that seem to fill the landscape at the moment, not so many last week, but this week, they are everywhere.

 

I visited three areas of bush recently, Monument Hill in Kilmore, Goldie Reserve towards Lancefield and Mt Piper, to the South of Broadford. Each of these sites is within fifteen kilometres of the others and each was heavily colonized by these little spiders.

The webs are hung across every gap, between trees, along wire fences and stretching from the ground to the low branches of trees. The strands of web are very thick and quite strong. Some of the webs were so close to each other that they overlapped. The poor flies and moths must have a tough time avoiding them when out and about.

In the centre of each web is a brightly covered little spider. Each looks as though it has been painted with white cake icing from a piping gun.With six sharp and prominent spines,  identification is quite simple.

They are named, quite logically, Six-spined Spider. (Gasteracantha minax) 

Eastern Spine Bill?

SOME SURPRISING VISITORS

 

It has been reasonably benign summer, a few hot days with cooler mild days in between. There was a great deal of rain early on which gave us huge plant growth, in places along the Dry Creek at Kilmore East, the grass is standing well over my head.

The trees have been, and still are, laden with blossom, so there has been plenty of food for the parrots and honey eaters.

I found this little one peeping at me from the bushes, late one hot evening. It was in and out of a bowl of water, having a good wash and drink. The photographs are poor but they show the bright blue honey sucker beak and matching blue legs. The colours too are quite striking.

I am not sure who he or she is? Nor are others from Kilmore who know their birds.

Could it be a young Scarlet Honeyeater (Myzomela  sanguinolenta)? Perhaps, my books shows them as living inn this area.

 Could it be a Dusky Honeyeater (Myzomela erythrocephala)?  I think not, they are a Queensland bird.

Aaah! But  I think it may be a female or a young Eastern Spine bill.

I'll keep my eyes open for another evening visit.