Booderee National Park NSW

Heath and Crimson Rosella on flowering Grass Tree

Bird counting with CRES (Centre fro Resource and Environmental Studies - Australian National University)and the woodland ecology group led by Prof. David Lindenmayer. We assembled late on Monday evening at the Canberra University Field Centre near Creswell and prepared ourselves for early morning counts. There were about 12-14 of us in this years party - mostly members of the Canberra Ornithologists Group (COG) but with several CRES staff driving the 4x4 vehicles that are need to get into many of the sites. A reporter and photographer from the Canberra Times accompanied us on the first day and Bob McMullen (Federal MP for Fraser - a northern electorate of Canberra) joined us fro lunch on the Thursday.

Brush-tailed Possum

We recorded birds by sound or sight along fixed transects with counts of 5 mins duration at each of two points (the 20m and 80m markers) on each 100m transect. The object is to count birds and list species for radii of 25 m or 25-50m or more than 50m about the marker post but exclude birds present in other habitats than the one represented by the transect concerned and also to exclude any birds flying over the site. These additional observations are nevertheless recorded on the field data sheet. Each transect site is counted twice but by different observers and on different days. The study has now been running for 4 years starting in 2003. Shortly after the first count session bushfires burn out about half of the 110 sites and the study since 2004 has been concentrating on the recovery of bird populations in the park post fire. The transects have been selected as stratified randomized sites representing all of the various vegetation communities that were plotted during a vegetation survey sometime before 2003.

Woodlands

This year we competed the survey in the four days Tuesday 19th to Friday 22nd September.
On the Thursday afternoon I was able to record some calls of a pair of Brown Gerygone present in the rainforest gully feature at the Booderee Botanic Garden. We found the Satin Bowerbird bower in the usual place. A party from our group had found their nest on a visit to the gardens the day before! In fact we found three within a metre or so of each other. One nest had fallen to the forest floor but its attachment was still in place and another was in a poor state but the third looked fresh and near perfect. Nearby we found an Eastern Yellow Robin nest containing a chick and an egg. Later an adult was brooding on the nest.

Satin Bowerbird bower



A cluster of three Brown Gerygone nests
Top: attachment of old nest (now fallen to ground below)
Middle: Old nest (possibly one used last season?)
Bottom: Recently completed nest (not yet incubating?)

Eastern Yellow Robin on nest containing
one egg and one recently hatched chick

We also visited the ruins of the old lighthouse at St Georges Headland where there was a Pallid Cuckoo and an adult White-bellied Sea-Eagle soaring along the cliff edge. Later in the afternoon I checked out the breeding pair of Masked Lapwing that are always to be found at Murrays beach car park! A Swamp Wallaby was also seen wandering about in the car park area near the boat launching ramp.

Pallid Cuckoo

Masked Lapwing incubating

Masked Lapwing drowsy

Masked Lapwing alert

Incubating Masked Lapwing





Swamp Wallaby

A good week. Chris Davey drove down and back with me and we used the Fitzroy Falls route through Moss Vale going down but we came back via Tianjara Falls, Nerriga, Tarago and Bungendore. The route home was much shorter but the road unsurfaced for about 60km although it is in the process of being upgraded to a sealed route at present which should be completed in a year or so. This sealed road will make the journey to Nowra much shorter from Canberra than the choice of a Moss Vale and Kangaroo Valley or Batemans Bay and Braidwood alternative currently on offer.

Adult White-bellied Sea-Eagle