That’s really what bird watching is all about – getting the right timing. If you’re a minute earlier, you might have seen that button-quail walk across the path. If you’re a minute later, you might not have noticed the honeyeater fly into the tree. This year, I decided it was the right time to go tick off the critically endangered Orange-bellied Parrot. I was lucky enough to have the opportunity for my dad and I to go on a hiking/birding trip to the south-west of Tasmania
Not bothering to go to the last day of school for the year, we both got on the plane and headed off to Tasmania Hobart
After an exhilarating flight (lots of wind, so the plane was a bit shaky), we landed at Melaleuca. On the way to the hiker huts, we noticed the clouds looked a bit dark – we picked up the pace, and with about 200m to go, the heavens opened. We broke into a sprint – of course that was the point we flushed about 7 ORANGE-BELLIED PARROTS from the side of the track! Unfortunately, the rain was increasing, and we couldn’t stop, so we continued to the huts. Waiting for 30 minutes while the rain poured down felt like eternity. Eventually, it lessened and we headed over to the bird hide. Straight away, we were rewarded with fantastic views of 4 OBPs.
The rest of the day was spent in the hide, taking photos of the various birds that visited the feeder. Highlights included a small family of GREEN ROSELLAS, Beautiful Firetails, YELLOW-THROATED HONEYEATERS, a lone BLUE-WINGED PARROT (constantly being bullied by the OBPs) and a Rufous-bellied Pademelon. Later in the day, I found a foraging group of STRONG-BILLED HONEYEATERS near our hut, and a family group of DUSKY ROBINS were also around the general area.
The next morning brought slightly better weather, so I headed off in search of my second target for Melaleuca, the elusive Ground Parrot. After about an hour of tramping around through the button grass, I headed back to the hide when it started to rain, and had another wonderful session with the OBPs and Blue-winged Parrot. After chatting with the parrot volunteers, Helen and Mick, I learnt that all the females (currently in their nesting boxes), and the 12 males currently frequenting the feeder represented the entire known wild population. If all the males were paired with a female, that means 24 birds at Melaleuca, and none anywhere else according to a survey done earlier in the season… not a promising outlook.
Anyway, it was about that stage that the university student doing research on Tassie Devils ran back to the hide to inform me (knowing I’d been looking) that she’d just seen a Ground Parrot back near the huts. We hurried back over, and after tentatively stepping towards the spot it had flushed to, we flushed it again, a magnificent GROUND PARROT! We got brief views as it flew off about 100m into the grass. A quick attempt to re-locate it failed…
After breakfast, I decided to have one more go at Ground Parroting before we headed off on our hike. I walked down into the grass, well away from the huts. I heard a trill way off to my right that sounded like a field-wren (would have been a lifer), so I headed off towards that. I heard a noise, and turned around to see a small, green blob running away through the button grass. Another Ground Parrot! This one was a polite Ground Parrot, and decided it was more convenient to walk away from me, rather than flush. He would walk a few metres in front of me, and as I tried to circle round to the side, he circled round too, so I ended up herding this Ground Parrot around for about a minute before he flushed off about 20m. Luckily, I found him again, and he continued walking away from me. This was one of the highlights of to trip for me, and now when someone asks me what my favourite bird experience is, I’ll probably reply with “chasing Ground Parrots through the button grass moorlands of south-west Tasmania
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