Birding Central Australia #91 - Western Gerygone

Western Gerygone Gerygone fusca

This week I caught up with a little grey bird that has been eluding me for yonks – the Western Gerygone. There are a few of these frequenting the garden at the moment, and they can often be found in any decent patch of scrub around Alice, but it’s hard to get them to sit still!

It might not be much to look at but this little bird has one of the truly enchanting calls of all the small bush birds in The Centre. This song was famously described by the late Graham Pizzey, the doyenne of Australian ornithologists as a, “sweet, elfin, silvery ‘falling-leaf melody’ that seems to finish before end”. Personally, it reminds me of a tiny violin being played somewhere off in the mulga. Its distinctive song is perhaps fortuitous, as the Western Gerygone can easily be mistaken for any of six or seven other small grey birds that lurk in similar habitat around Alice. Once that call is heard though, there can be no mistake.

Some big news has come through this week; Letter-winged Kites are being seen again at Mac Clark (Acacia peuce) Conservation Reserve. Alice Field Nats President Barb Gilfedder was out there last weekend and reported four birds. These rare desert dwellers are mainly nocturnal hunters and are usually quite difficult to locate. They can be the subject of misidentification due to their close resemblance to the related Black-shouldered Kite. The clincher is to look for the bold letter “M” (or “W” depending on your viewpoint) inscribed on the underside of the wings which give the bird its name.

Apart from that bombshell, and a lone Pelican at the sewage ponds, it has been a quiet week as far as reports go. This is, no doubt, the calm before Alice Springs Bird Festival starts turning up some crippling sightings next month.

Happy birding!

Birding Central Australia #90 - Red-necked Stint

Red-necked Stint Calidris ruficollis

This little bird is a Red-necked Stint. Sure, it doesn't have a very red neck at the moment, but if you Google it, you will come up with plenty of images of the same species on their northern breeding grounds, and they do sport quite a red neck. These birds, at around 13 centimetres, have just flown in to Alice Springs from somewhere in the far north of Asia. According to my very rough calculations, this constitutes a flight equivalent to around 107,692,307 body lengths.

They’re not alone in this heroic feat of migration, but they are among the smallest of their cousins who make similar journeys. Also at Alice Springs Sewage Ponds at the moment are good numbers of Sharp-tailed Sandpipers, Common Greenshanks, Marsh Sandpipers, Wood Sandpipers, and Common Sandpipers, all feeding heartily after a lengthy flight from the northern hemisphere.

Elsewhere around Alice this week there are still plenty of reports of Rainbow Lorikeets – will Alice Springs be the next conquest of this highly successful coloniser of cities around Australia? Farther afield, White-winged Trillers have been turning up in small flocks in the Tanami desert north-west of town and also to the south around Kulgera.

Western Gerygones have become regular visitors to the bird bath at the Land for Wildlife offices to the south of town and Nicola Hanrahan reports a population of Redthroat which she has identified on the outskirts of Eastside.

Orange Chats continue to be resident at the sewage ponds, and the Rainbow Bee-eaters are well and truly back – a sure sign of the approach of warmer weather.

Happy birding!

Birding Central Australia #89 - Wood Sandpiper

Wood Sandpiper Tringa glareola

This week has seen the wrap-up of all things Olympic over in London, so it is fitting that our bird is also a long-distance champion of sorts. The Alice Springs Field Naturalists' quarterly wader count at the sewage ponds went ahead on Sunday, and found three early-returning migrants.

The Wood Sandpiper is a tiny bird which manages an annual migration from its breeding grounds in northern Asia, all the way to Australia, and then back again for the northern spring. They make this extraordinary journey in just a few hops with some birds completing continuous flights of over 4,500 kilometres. To accomplish this, their bodies undergo astonishing changes, the mechanisms of which are still poorly understood by scientists. They shrink their internal organs, including the brain, by considerable percentages to allow space for extra stores of fat - fuel for the long flight. They then carefully time their departure to take advantage of cooler night time temperatures, tail-winds, and good weather. During their flight, their bodies will be operating right on the upper threshold of metabolism - the equivalent of a human being running Roger Bannister's famous four-minute mile pace, for hours on end. The annual migration of this, and many similar species of waders, is justifiably touted as the greatest feat of physical endurance in the vertebrate world.

Chestnut Teals continue to be seen at the Alice Springs Sewage Ponds, and a Nankeen Night-heron has been spotted by a few sharp-eyed birdos up the track at Renner Springs. Now that the migrants seem to be passing through, we can expect a few more interesting species to be turning up over the summer months; in Broome they have already had some stunning exotics in the form of Common Redshank and Asian Dowitchers.

Happy birding!

Birding Central Australia #88 - Pink-eared Duck

Pink-eared Duck Malacoryhnchus membranaceus

At first glance, the Pink-eared Duck may seem poorly named. “Zebra Duck”, might seem a more fitting appellation, and this been an alternative English name for this species ever since early pioneers saw them. If you look a bit closer though, you might be able to make out just a small patch of pink behind the eye. This feature can be easily missed at greater distances, but what is impossible to miss is that amazing bill. The Pink-ear is a filter feeder that ploughs that enormous instrument through the water to sieve out small invertebrates. 

The birding around The Centre is approaching fever-pitch at the moment with several interesting reports through the week. A reliable source had good views of Grey Falcon at the Alice Springs Desert Park – the same bird seen at the poo ponds previously?

Several local birders have been enjoying a pair of Chestnut Teal at the poo ponds. These ducks are uncommon up this way, usually sticking to the southern and eastern parts of the country. The female looks superficially similar to our local Grey Teals but the male is unmistakable with his pale brown body and metallic green head.

A flock of 4 Red-winged Parrots were seen in Arthur Creek on the Plenty Highway, and Lucy Creek Station is hosting one of the biggest flocks of Little Corellas I’ve seen in years. At a rough count there were 900 birds in one flock with a few other smaller flocks seen about the area.

The first waders in worn breeding plumage have arrived at Broome, so all eyes will be on the sewage ponds here in coming weeks to identify the first of our returning long-distance champs arriving from the Russian tundra.

Happy birding!