Ross’s standard birding attire is a pair of light or medium weight cargo pants and a plain, cotton t-shirt. Where the stereotypical birder might don a lightweight, long sleeve, khaki button-down, Ross is in either a red, blue, or gray short sleeve tee and more often than not, the t-shirt has multiple holes. He likes to wear the same thing over and over and over because “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” is a life motto he likes to live by.
It wasn’t until his cargo pants had a gigantic slit in the knee (from a fall in the Barren Grounds), a slice down the backside from squeezing between barbed wire, and about 4 holes in the crotch on top of the regular holes at the bottom where he kicks his feet together, all paired with a red shirt sporting its own 8 holes, that I begged him to change his attire. This was Australia after all, he didn’t have to look like a total mess. I asked him to clean up but his look didn’t seem to bother him. I guess this was a different kind of “clean up” trip. He was here to clean up birds and didn’t care what he looked like while doing it.
More or less, the only birds Ross needed for his clean-up trip were all of the hard ones with just a sprinkling of a few easy ones here and there. Having lived in Australia when he was 19, before our world went digital and GPS and widespread use of eBird changed the birding landscape, Ross navigated major cities using paper maps and old-school mp3 recordings on an iPod. Smart phones didn’t even exist yet, or at least not to him in 2008. There was no way to easily look up recent sightings or contact local birders. To everyone reading who is laughing because more than half your birding life was spent birding in those conditions, Ross knows exactly what that was like! And to everyone younger reading who has no idea what that is like, well, I don’t know what to say, just imagine how lost you feel leaving the house without your phone. Now imagine leaving the country. As a result of the times, Ross had a life bird or two missing almost everywhere and we would essentially be covering the whole country! By the end of this trip I could say I had been in (and birded) every single Australian state and territory.
When you are going to every single Australian territory, there’s a lot of moving around. Only rarely did we stay in the same place more than one night. We bounced around just like the kangaroos and wallabies that we saw bouncing around outside of our window. Which by the way, are just as cool to see as you might think. But the closer you look at kangaroos with their unique anatomy the more ridiculous they become. Actually, if you look at a kangaroo or wallaby long enough, eventually they don’t seem real at all.
Anyway, we were bouncing around Australia from one parrot to the next. Some free, unsolicited advice: never underestimate just how many species of parrots live on the continent. There is somewhere around 60 different species (give or take) of parrots alone! Sometimes parrots can be seen by the hundreds literally feeding around in people’s front yards or various parks, and other times parrots are among the rarest birds in the country.
Ross hoped that by the end of this “cleanup” trip he would only be missing three birds, all of them very difficult and all of them parrots. (Princess, Orange-bellied, and the rarest of them all, Night, for those curious minds.)
We’ve always birded by the philosophy “focus on the hard birds and the easy ones will just happen.” Oh look, there’s some more free, unsolicited birding advice for the day.
We bounced from Sydney looking for Glossy Black Cockatoo to Barren Grounds looking for Ground Parrot to Northern Victoria looking for Turquoise Parrot, Swift Parrot, and Superb Parrot and made our way to the Melbourne area where we found Gang-gang Cockatoo. Along the way we saw plenty of other non-parrot birds like Eastern Bristlebird, Rockwarbler, Superb Lyrebird, Speckled Warbler, and Diamond Firetail.
One of my favorite mornings of birding in the Melbourne area was the morning we spent roaming the Western Wastewater Treatment Plant. The Western Wastewater Treatment plant provides a haven for tens of thousands of birds, thanks to ample water and a variety of landforms and plants, with vast lagoons home to nearly 300 bird species. This area is really special and I’m so glad the treatment plant opens its doors to birdwatchers. (Birders are given a key to the locked gates and are welcomed to check out the birds that happily use the treatment pools!) I enjoyed seeing so many swans, ducks, geese, shorebirds, and gulls (among other birds) up close. Along with Australian Crake and Spotless Crake, we also managed to find our main target, two Australasian Bitterns which had been reported off and on in the area. This was a lifer for both of us!
Of course during our “bouncing” we also made a few “fun” stops and checked out The Great Ocean Road for Rufous Bristlebird and Gang-Gang Cockatoo. We also bumped into a cooperative pair of Hooded Plovers! Being winter, most of the overlooks into the ocean were deserted and we had them all to ourselves, but the popular Great Ocean Road deserves all of the touristy hype it gets — the views are amazing. (We didn’t do the entire drive and there’s still so much to see that I’m sure we will be back to do more!) Along The Great Ocean Road, we also made sure to make a stop to search for one of the most distinct marsupials in all of Australia, the Koala! We were delighted to find several, and even got to watch one as it climbed down from a tree, walked on the ground, and then climbed up a small sapling almost right in front of us! I don’t think we could have asked for a better viewing from an animal that is typically seen sitting in a tree taking a nap and not moving!
We also got to see Australian Painted Snipe, a bird whose numbers have been declining rapidly over the years. As it turns out a snipe was found at Bells Swamp, and birders from all over Australia were coming to tick it. We decided to join in on the fun. Ross had seen plenty of snipe back in the day so this was not a lifer for him, but it sure was a good bird to get for the year. We, along with about 20 other birders, stood around waiting for the snipe to show itself and soon got to watch as a single Australian Painted Snipe fed along the shore.
It’s a story I’ll share all on its own in the next blog post, but we also got to see one of Australia’s best birds: Plains-wanderer.
I had been in Australia one week and had seen Regent Honeyeater, Plains-wanderer, Australasian Bittern, and Australian Painted Snipe. Not a bad haul!
This birding occurred July 6-13, 2023.
Here’s a sample eBird checklist from Western Treatment Plant and here’s one from Bells Swamp.
Amazing post, you captivated me initially talking about Ross’s birding attire habits! Lol. You write and document so well Melissa!