Sydney Suburbs 10/26--SOUTHERN EMUWREN, YELLOW-TUFTED HONEYEATER, WHITE-EARED HONEYEATER, TAWNY-CROWNED HONEYEATER, ROSE ROBIN, RED-WHISKERED BULBUL

TAWNY-CROWNED HONEYEATER

We said our goodbyes to Kim, Peg, and Lon on Wednesday night. Thursday, Mike, Shari & I birded the Royal Botanic Gardens again, but this time not in a drenching rain--nothing new was added to our list for the first time in 3 weeks.

Friday was our last day of birding (though Mike was staying on for almost another week) and for it we negotiated the train system (quite easily, actually and very cheap) to Sutherland, south of Sydney, where Steve, our guide who took us around Royal National Park at the beginning of the trip, met us. Since we'd seen so many birds by this point he really had to work to find us some new birds.

He started us out at Heathkote National Park, going down a rather steep dirt track covered in loose stones. At the bottom of the trail we were bemused to find directional signs to the railroad station. After a while we found our two target birds, quite close to one another though in slightly different different habitats--YELLOW-TUFTED HONEYEATER in some higher trees, WHITE-EARED HONEYEATER in some lower brush.

Our next stop was the Lady Carrington trail back in the huge Royal National Park. This trail was a little easier to walk as it wasn't as steep or rocky. Steve had two birds in mind here, only one of which he mentioned. We soon found it, a rather drab looking female ROSE ROBIN. While we were having some tea and coffee at a picnic table the second bird appeared. I saw it moving though the brush and first called out "brushturkey" which don't occur that far south. It was a Superb Lyrebird (the world's largest--and some say most beautiful sounding--songbird) a life-bird for Mike (we'd had one with Steve our first trip to the park), and though Shari & Mike chased it around the area, it never stayed still long enough to get a good picture of it. Steve said that it kept his record of finding lyrebirds for clients at 100%. (The next day, Mike did get better looks and photos of the birds when he again went out with Steve).

With the Rose Robin, my total species for Australia was tied at 324 with South Africa. The only place I have more species is the United States, of course. Our next stop was at a power-line cut in the town of Waterfall. Here, after a dusty 1/2 mile walk we came upon yet another example of the nectariferous birds, the TAWNY-CROWNED HONEYEATER, though this species, living in such dry habitat where flowering birds are scarces, tends to more insects than others in its family. With that birds on the list I began to chant "You're number 2, you're number 2." Steve, who is as phlegmatic as our previous guide, Glen, was antic, did not seem amused.

Emu foot

Steven then asked if anyone was interested in seeing some Aboriginal rock art. A power-line cut in a suburb seemed an unlikely spot for historic art, but the aboriginal people, at the time, didn't anticipate towers and highways and carved their drawing where they lived, hundreds of years ago. More amazing to me is that these drawings have been able to survive the potential depredations of the surrounding populace. I can just imagine what a canvas graffiti "artists" (and even in Australia and I saw the same crappy spray paint calligraphy that I see in NY) would find the flat rocks that he took us to, through a rather circuitous route.

There he explained to us the various symbols as well as the hierarchy involved as to who was allowed to draw and to preserve the drawings, which, because they are no longer being tended to are slowly fading from the both natural and man-made forces.

Though emus no longer occur in the eastern part of the Australia, the drawings show that at one time, they did.

Emu with arms

 Our next stop was Towra Nature Reserve, where we hoped to find Yellow Thornbill which inhabit mangrove. And though we did see flying silhouettes, I wasn't willing to count them as they could have been any small bird for all I saw of them. Shari & I did see, however, a bird Steve considered a much better find, a SOUTHERN EMUWREN. Mike, who was attending to other business, missed (until the next day). Steve said that emuwren would be a good to end with ("Yes it would!" replied Mike), but one more bird appeared on our way out--RED-WHISKERED BULBUL, an introduced species and one Mike had seen in India, but lifers for Shari & me. While I was happy to see the 5 or 6 birds chasing each other around, I think it would have been more fitting had my last Australian bird been the native emuwren instead of the introduced bulbul. While I have no plans to ever go to India, bulbuls have also been introduced in small areas in Florida and California. Whatever its status, the bulbul was my 327th species in Australia. And my birding brain was pretty much baked by that point.

We left our hotel at 6:30 AM Saturday morning and arrived home 11:15 PM Saturday night which doesn't sound so bad until you consider that because of the international date line we were actually traveling for 32 hours and 15 minutes on trains, planes and automobiles