Friday, June 1, 2007

May 2007


During the month of May 2007 I have recorded these birds in a 3 hectare area around our house on Whiskers Creek Road (or, for those in brackets, other parts of the Shire).  This totals to 61 species!  

Water birds:  Little pied cormorant, Masked Lapwing (White-faced heron, Australasian grebe, Australian wood duck, Pacific black duck, Grey teal, Australasian Shoveler,)
Birds of prey: Wedge-tailed eagle, (Nankeen kestrel)
Parrots and relatives: Yellow-tailed black-cockatoo, Sulphur-crested cockatoo, Gang-gang cockatoo, Galah, Crimson rosella, Eastern rosella.
Kingfishers and other non-songbirds: Laughing kookaburra, Common bronzewing (Crested pigeon, Superb lyrebird)
Honeyeaters: Eastern spinebill, Yellow-faced honeyeater, White-eared honeyeater, Red wattlebird, White-naped honeyeater, Noisy Miner (Fuscous honeyeater, Noisy friarbird, Brown-headed honeyeater)
Flycatchers and similar species: Welcome swallow, Grey fantail, Willie wagtail, Scarlet robin, Golden whistler, Magpie-lark, (Dusky woodswallow, flame robin)
Other, smaller, birds: Weebill, Striated thornbill, Brown thornbill, Buff-rumped thornbill, Yellow-rumped thornbill, White-browed scrubwren, Superb fairy-wren, White-throated treecreeper, Red-browed finch, Spotted pardalote, Striated pardalote, (Varied sitella, Richard’s pipit, Skylark, European goldfinch, Double-barred finch, House sparrow, Common starling)
Other, larger, birds: White-winged chough, Pied Currawong, Grey currawong, Grey butcherbird, Australian Magpie, Australian Raven, Little Raven

The range of species has dropped quite a lot over the last month: nearly all of the insect eating species have gone (not totally bad news since it means less bities).  This appears to have included the robins, which seem to have passed through on their way to the plains and urban parts of Canberra.