Chifley Chronicle #7

Old Superb Lyrebird nest at unusual site on rocks

A week after being at Green Cape it has been cold in Canberra with frosty nights. Temperature has been down to -8C and the bird baths have been frozen solid. Daytime it has rarely reached 12C. Activity around the house has not changed much except there are certainly 2 pairs of King Parrot visiting this week. The big stump in the front has been 'ground-out' leaving a massive amount of sawdust! Red Wattlebird are still focused on the profusely flowering gum in the street up the hill.
The main activity this week has been to set up the cassette tape recorder (a Sony Walkman professional WM-D6) that samples sound at Tidbinbilla. This gear automatically turns on and off at half hourly intervals taking a snippet of 7 seconds of omnidirectional sound each time.
This may seem a very short sample but experience has taught us that this is sufficient and in this way an hour of tape will last us for a week. The switching mechanism is custom-made to interrupt the power supply and thus turn on and off the cassette. The whole arrangement is housed in what we have now perfected as a waterproof box with the microphone hanging below a small lampshade which provides a little protection from rain. Remarkably this high sensitivity microphone (a Sennheiser K6 system using an ME62 capsule) has stood the test of three winters very well! That was Wednesday. I also tried for some Australasian Shoveler recordings using my portable minidisc (Sony MZ-R900) and another Sennheiser K6 but with the long shotgun capsule ME67 wind-shielded in its new Rycote Softie. Incidentally, why do people constantly spell the name of this group of ducks incorrectly as Shovellers? It is one of those delicious anomalies of the English language that I love to look out for!
Today, Saturday, was the day for our annual 'lyrebird count'. We ask members of the Canberra Ornithologists Group (COG) to come out to Tidbinbilla at dawn and we send them off to all of the main fire trails to do a walk survey listening for lyrebird calls and song and ask them to plot as accurately as they can the positions of any lyrebirds they detect. We had 9 takers. They plot their observations on topographic maps and we co-ordinate these plots at the end of the day. Of course this does not cover the whole area of the reserve but gives us 5 main samples. As another aside I should point out that these fire trails have rather fine and evocative names. Gibraltar Rocks, Devils Gap, Fishing Gap, Ashbrook Creek and Camel Back.

Early morning dew drops on Silver Wattle Acacia dealbata

Today it was remarkable quiet along the forest trails with few birds calling and long period of the walk with nothing to spot in the way of any birds. It was cold and foggy at the start but soon brightened to a sunny morning and as usual remained perfectly still. I checked out the site of a lyrebird nest built last winter. It was in a rather unusual position up on the side of a rock. It looked to have survived the summer and may have been visited recently but did not seem to be in active use at the moment.

Along the trail this morning

Skeleton of a Mistletoe high in crown of fire damaged gum

Base of gum showing burnt bark and fresh flaking bark

I tried for more shoveler calls and successfully added some extra material to my collection. I must find a way to add MP3 sound files to this blog. There is a pair of shoveler that I can usually rely on to be at a certain part of one of the ponds in the middle of the reserve on most mornings. Today there were 6-8 Grey Teal, all in pairs, along with the two shovelers and a group of 9 Pacific Black Duck. These ducks, as usual of late, were at my spot along with a dozen or so Dusky Moorhens and a couple or three Coot. The PBDs were interesting in that the nine birds included a female with 8 males! I had hoped for some courtship behaviour with such a gathering but little activity occurred in the half hour or so I was recording. A cob Black Swan called once before rejoining his pen on the next pond downstream. For some reason they had become separated by 200 m or more. She had with her the three cygnets that featured in an earlier blog. These cygnets are growing fast and feathering up although they still appear downy. They are now less cute looking and, in body shape, are more like miniature adults. I must add some photographs of them to the next blog now that they have grown so much.
A Grey-headed Lapwing Vanellus cinereus, a common species in SE Asia, has been found in northern central NSW. This news was on the birding-aus chat line today. If true, it will be a first for Australia. According to the posting it "was seen and photographed by Brett & Karen Davis on 19 June at 11.45 at Burren Junction, NSW. It was seen near a grain silo from the highway just west of the town which is roughly half way between Narrabri and Walgett, 50km W of Wee Waa. It had a growth on the right foot but flew strongly". What a remarkable vagrant. I am sure that the twitchers are now on their way as I write this stuff. Best of luck to them but I will not be rushing to join them. I suppose it is more remarkable than a Killdeer Plover in Norfolk but they are still an utterly crazy lot chasing after such sightings.