Crace Wetlands

Meet at 9.00am near the children’s playground on Narden Street Crace – parking is available on Narden Street. Likely species include the usual common water birds, plus Grey Teal and Hardhead, grebes, Black-fronted Dotterel, Little Grassbirds, Australian Reed-Warblers, and possibly Golden-headed Cisticola. There are a few coffee shops close by which people may want to go to afterwards.

It was already a hot morning as nine of us started our walk around the Crace wetlands and pond area.  We first saw a couple of Australian Reed-Warblers, apparently posing for us.  A little further along, I mentioned that “this is the place where a few times I have seen a Spotless Crake but not for months” and magically one walked out right in front of us, with another lurking in the reeds. We did a slow loop around the wetland and pond observing the usual water birds (Eurasian Coots, Dusky Moorhens, Purple Swamphens, Wood Ducks and Pacific Black Ducks), plus some not so common ones including a Golden-headed Cisticola, a Little Grassbird, a Hardhead and two Grey Teal. One unusual observation was a pair of Pacific Black Ducks copulating on the water. Some not so rare birds included a flock of 27 House Sparrows!  A raptor, some way off towards Percival Hill, is likely to have been a Collared Sparrowhawk but it couldn’t be positively identified.  Overhead sightings included Australian White Ibis, two Little Pied Cormorants and 13 Little Black Cormorants.  Strangely absent near the water were Welcome Swallows but we did find some later on our walk along the street.

We decided to walk the few blocks to the Hilltop Reserve to observe in quite a different environment, stopping on the way to observe a pair of Magpie-larks which have nested atop a light pole.  In this very exposed spot, a quite advanced chick was easily seen, but only one – less than a week earlier when there were definitely two chicks in the nest. In such an exposed spot it would be difficult for the parents to keep the chicks sheltered from the blazing sun and predators.

At the Hilltop Reserve quite a few old eucalypts have been retained which provide nesting hollows for many birds. Here we saw numerous Red-rumped Parrots, a Pied Currawong, Australian Ravens, Crimson and Eastern Rosellas, two Striated Pardalotes, two Galahs and a number of Sulphur-crested Cockatoos, including one which seemed to be enlarging a hollow.  There were only a few Noisy Miners and some Common Mynas at a tree hollow. We returned to our starting point near the ponds and overhead spotted more White Ibis followed by a single Straw-necked Ibis. In all a total of 32 species were observed.