The Walk on 16 November will meet at the Namadgi Visitors Centre at 9am and cover the woodlands behind the Centre and the Gudgenby River. We’ll then relocate to the Tharwa Sandwash area on the Murrumbidgee.
Wed 16 November 2016 09:00am
Post event report
17 members gathered at the Visitors’ Centre just South of Tharwa on a beautiful morning.
We headed off to do the Woodland Loop trail, beginning by crossing the wall of the small dam. Several Australian Reed-warblers were calling in the dense reeds and a single Australasian Grebe in breeding plumage was in the water.
A good collection of returned migrans were breeding: Noisy Friarbird; White throated Gerygone (occupied nest); Dusky Woodswallow (recently fledged young, and agitated behaviour in chasing off a Grey Butcherbird). Other breeding records were Australian Magpie (Recently fledged young); Magpie Lark (recently fledged young) and Common Starling (visiting probable nest site).
Moving down to the Gudgenby river we added a few standard species plus the first Rainbow Bee-eater for the day. We totalled 36 species for the site.
Moving to Tharwa Sandwash, we started with an unsuccessful search for the Tawny Frogmouths, concluding by looking across the Murrumbigdgee. 2 Black-fronted Dotterels were doing their thing on the waterline while a Nankeen Kestrel perched on a large dead tree opposite. A Dollarbird appeared and disappeared into a hollow. After some discussion of the time it spent in the hollow, this was rated as an occupied nest rather inspecting the hollow.
Another dead tree caused us to log (sorry) Tree Martins inspecting a hollow. A Laughing Kookaburra excited us as it was carrying a snake – estimated as 50cm in length -as it flew to a tree and subsequently across the river. We totalled 30 species at this site, despite the lack of Red-rumped Parrots, Red-browed finches and several other expected species.
Across the 2 sites we recorded a pretty good total of 47 species.