Every single day for the last several months I have gotten updates on the Regent Honeyeaters of Australia. When I say every single day, I genuinely mean EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. Often over dinner or before bed, Ross would check eBird to see if there were any sightings and for weeks prior to our trip there were no Regent Honeyeaters to be had. Ross was stressing over it. Many species of birds in Australia are migratory with unknown patterns; Regent Honeyeaters are birds like that. They also hold the special distinction of being critically endangered. Basically, Regent Honeyeater is not a bird that you can simply go find if you set out looking for it. They are scarce and nomadic. Fortunately three weeks before we left for our trip, a group showed up north of Sydney! We were in Taiwan for 11 days prior to going to Australia but every day we were there Ross still checked on the birds north of Sydney and gave me updates on whether or not they were still there. It was never a countdown on when we would fly to Australia, it was always a countdown like “nine more days those Regents need to hang” or “48 hours until we see the Regent Honeyeaters!”
Our itinerary shifted so that these would be the very first birds we would search for when we arrived in Australia. Ross told me he would chase a Regent Honeyeater anywhere within a 12 hour radius of where we were so to have birds only an hour and a half north of where we were landing was extremely ideal.
It’s kind of serendipitous that the very first Australian bird Ross put in his binoculars was the bird he was most excited to see — a Regent Honeyeater feeding in the flowers of a blooming swamp mahogany tree! This was of course no accident because when we landed we drove straight to the town of New Castle where they had last been seen. It was a twitch! I know that it sounds better in a story to say that the bird Ross had been hoping to see most was the very first bird he put in his binoculars, but it really was. Sure, we’d seen birds naked eye but given that it was raining we weren’t exactly looking at all of the birds that flew by to protect the glass on our Swaros so when a bird flew in that had the right jizz he finally took a close look and voila! Despite the approaching storm, the forest we were standing in was very birdy and I’m sure that we would have stayed longer had we not been extremely exhausted from our 9 hour overnight flight and 2 hour drive to get to where we were. It didn’t take too much convincing to get Ross to go to our hotel so we could at least brush our teeth and give Roger some time on his belly. We were glad we left when we did because just as we loaded the baby into the car the skies opened up and an all-out downpour began.
We returned to the same spot the following morning, after a brief stint searching for Spotted Quailthrush, to spend more time with the Regent Honeyeaters because it was simply too good of a bird not to! The weather had cleared but the Regent Honeyeaters were not as cooperative and we only saw them perched once. A few other birders had turned up that morning as well but the birds were only seen briefly in flight by one birder. Several birders missed seeing them altogether. Soon we opted to move on with our trip.
Even though this was a birding trip, we couldn’t leave Sydney without first stopping at the iconic Sydney Opera House.
As we drove, I loved looking out my window and seeing lifers left and right. Oh, Australian Magpie here. Ah Willie Wagtail there. Oh look, a Galah! All “dirt birds” but all new to me! Ross, who lived in Australia when he was 19, only had about 70 lifers to get. This was a cleanup trip for him. But for me, Australia was a whole new world — I could get something like 400 lifers!
One of the birds Ross needed to see was Glossy Black-Cockatoo. He said it was his biggest miss during his time living in Brisbane. Thankfully eBird is a fantastic resource when it comes to looking up random sites for random species so Ross consulted eBird to see where we could go to find our next target. Despite several more recent checklists from a national park in northern Sydney, Ross chose a sighting from what he thought was a small park. A smaller park meant we would likely be able to find the birds quickly because there are only so many places for the birds to “hide.” We didn’t have a lot of time to dedicate to this endeavor if we wanted to make it to the Opera House before dark but as it turned out, the “small” park was much bigger than Ross initially thought! Suddenly we didn’t know if we would be able to cram as much into this day as Ross had originally planned! Although eBird can be a great resource for where to search for birds, unless users input comments or details about specifics, like where the bird was seen on the trail, which is rarely the case, you are flying blind when you get there.
I’m sharing this story because who doesn’t love hearing about things working out perfectly? We arrived to the park and Ross chose to park the car in an area that he thought “looked good” and walked off down a nearby trail. He wasn’t gone more than 5 minutes (I stayed back in the car to let Roger finish his nap) before he came back to alert me that he found a group of three. The sounds of seeds cracking was their giveaway. Roger woke up from his nap and we all walked back to to the cockatoos. These birds were super confiding and we could walk directly up to the tree they were feeding in to watch as their U-shaped bottom mandible perfectly held the Allocasuarina cone they were eating. I’m probably going to say it a hundred more times, but the fact that there are parrots in Australia is one of my favorite things about being here!
We stopped at the absolutely iconic Sydney Opera House just before sunset to take in the architecture and scenic views of the Harbour Bridge. There’s just something about architectural brilliance in a stunning location that makes for the perfect place to watch the sun set on a successful first few days in Australia.
This birding occurred on July 4-5, 2023.
Here’s a checklist from our Regent Honeyeater twitch on that first day, here’s one from the second morning, and here’s the short checklist from the cockatoos!