Eric Singleton Bird Sanctuary

Eric Singleton Bird Sanctuary is a re-vegetated urban bush and wetland located just 8kms from the Perth CBD on the Swan River in the suburb of Bayswater. It’s at 31°55'37"S 115°55'37"E in case you are interested in checking it out.

Yesterday morning Birds Australia WA group organised an excursion there. I went along and volunteered to write it up. Here’s my report for the next issue of WA Bird Notes which is the newsletter for WA Birds Australia members.

Spending a glorious winter’s morning at this Bayswater bush and wetland area rewarded fifteen birders with some interesting sightings. The highlight was a group of White-naped Honeyeaters feeding in the flowering eucalypts surrounding the western border of the lake. This was the first recording of the White-naped at this site. All up five species of honeyeater were seen, the others being the Brown, Singing, White-cheeked and New Holland. The vantage point of the bird hide over the wetland provided some excellent views of Pink-eared Ducks. We saw five species of ducks altogether. Setting up nesting boxes has been successful in attracting five duck species to breed in the area. The white plastic nesting boxes themselves are quite ugly, but the ducks are not bothered, so that’s the main thing.



Eric Singleton Bird Reserve is adjacent to the Swan River and has been extensively revegetated. It encompasses a variety of habitats: bush, fresh water wetland and estuarine river. All up we saw a total of 45 species. Other interesting sightings were a Richard’s Pipit, a Black-fronted Dotterel, a Little Grassbird and a distant view of an Osprey, nesting on the top of a mast across the river, near the Ascot racecourse.

The striated pardalote is mostly heard but not seen

(Photo copyright Wayne Eddy, reproduced with permission)

We hear the striated pardalote quite often, especially in spring, but they rarely come down from the neighbour's huge eucalypts, where they hang out. For such a tiny bird (11cm) and they have a very loud call, which you can hear via an MP3 recording on the Birds in Backyards site.

Striated pardalotes nest in tree hollows, mostly, like this one in a paperbark at Lake Gwelup. Wayne Eddy of The Friends of Lake Gwelup took this fantastic photo of the bird outside the nest hole.

More birds at Lake Gwelup

Today I spotted a few more birds to add to Tuesday's list at Lake Gwelup:

a pair of black fronted plovers
welcome swallows
pink eared ducks
Australian shelduck
Swamp harrier

The pink eared ducks are quite rare on this lake and they were mightily disturbed by the harrier passing overhead.

Garden Island wildlife

Garden Island carpet python in good hands.

If you need a good reason to join Birds Australia then the program of events organised by the Western Australian BA group is surely one of them.

Boyd Wykes of the Defence Support Group (Dept. of Defence) lead a trip to Garden Island on Feb 14, 2009. Thankfully the day turned out to be cloudy and not too hot. The birds were quiet, But we got to handle one of the local reptiles, a 2 metre long female carpet python. Also the insight into what the Defence people are doing in the area of environmental protection was well worth the effort of getting up at 5.00 am. Bird-wise is it encouraging to hear of the thriving Fairy penguin colony of 200 breeding pairs that have estabilished themselves there, amidst the Navy ships and submarines. Fairy terns are also breeding on the island.

The trip promo and plan for the day was:

"This is one of the few opportunities to look at the bird life on Garden Island. Meet at the Garden Island Causeway at 7:30 am. We will car pool from there to reduce the number of cars on the island. It is proposed that we visit the following sites: Bouche View, Beagle Road beach, the small boat harbour to see the penguin colony, some history and some forest at Stirling’s Well and Gilbert Point for waders and terns. We may be able to swim there. We will visit Point Atwick for Osprey. We will have lunch at Cape Markham where there is shade and toilets."

Help the Orange Bellied Parrots

Orange-bellied Parrots need your help!

There are less than 200 OBPs remaining in the wild, and unlike other critically endangered Australian birds, they don’t have their own sticker series!

The National Recovery Team for OBPs will make the stickers, but we need your help developing some catchy phrases. To rustle up some inspiration, we’re running a competition, with the HANZAB Parrots Volume awarded to the best Open entry, and a field guide and binoculars awarded to the best Under 16’s entry. The OBP Communications Team will judge the entries.

Keep your ideas short and snappy (just like the Hooded Plover sticker example below), and send them to:

Rachel Sims DSE, 8-12 Julia St. Portland , VIC 3285 OR email to Rachel.Sims@dse.vic.gov.au with ‘Sticker’ in the subject line.

Entries close June 20^th 2008, prizes awarded by June 27^th 2008.

THREATENED BIRD NETWORK

tbn@birdsaustralia.com.au

More info on the Birds Australia website