If any Tasmanians read this blog and realize I’m wrong in my identifications—perhaps a bird I think I’ve seen would never be found where I found it, for example—I’d be very happy to be corrected. I’d also welcome info on behaviour or any comments that might tell me more about the birds.
Sept. 16: From the desk where I sit to write I saw both male and female blackbirds perched on the back fence. They are so like (North American) robins in shape and behaviour it’s startling. As I stood up to take a look through the binoculars at the male I had the feeling he was looking back at me, his head slightly cocked—and in fact he flew off suddenly when I stepped closer to the window so perhaps he could see me. That bright yellow bill is eye-catching. A second female I saw later, in a branch of a tree, also seemed to be watching me watching her. She looked like a faded N.A. robin, but a bit smaller—dusky brown back and tail, pale rufous breast, and dark stripes on her pale throat.
Yellow wattlebirds were flitting about in the gum tree as usual, filling the morning with their screechy calls. These are one of Tasmania’s 12 endemic birds, striped plumage with yellow belly, a very long tail, and larger than grackles. I forgot to note I got my first good look at one last Sunday (the 13th) when Irene and I walked to the Hill Street grocery. Its yellow wattles were large and bright, and edged with brilliant red—perhaps breeding colours? They seem quite acrobatic, able to hang from branches and forage upside-down in the trees.
In the afternoon I took myself up to Knocklofty again. Just past the entry to the park I watched a small bird with a longish tail dart into a tree and then to another one. It seemed to have some yellow on it, but I didn’t get a clear look—paging the bird book later I wondered if it might be a yellow-throated honeyeater. I walked as far as the frog dam while birds sang and swooped through the trees, but couldn’t get the glasses on any of them.
While istening to the frogs I heard fast wren-like caroling—and then caught sight of a bird I had very muich wanted to see: the superb fairy-wren, also called the blue fairy-wren (I think). It’s completely gorgeous, with a brilliant, almost electric, turquoise crown, cheek, and upper back. There’s darker blue in its plumage as well. It flies like wrens at home and cocks its long tail way up. I was able to track it back and forth for some time—and then moments after it had disappeared into bushes away from the frog pond I noticed a small brown wren with a buffy chest and belly, white throat and face, and a small reddish area around the eye. I think it might have been a female superb fairy-wren, since it darted about among the reeds for a few moments and then flew to a bush near where the male had vanished. It perched there for some time and I was able to watch it, head back and singing.
On the way back down I saw yellow wattlebirds again—they have a lovely silhouette when they fly—and also a raven going over very high, calling. Just before the end of the trail out I spied a robin sitting in a tree—but can’t say whether it was a scarlet robin or a flame.
Sept. 20: Irene and I took a 3-hour morning walk in the Hobart Linear Park, from Molle Street to the Cascades Female Convict Factory and back that yielded lots of good bird sightings, as well as tantalizing glimpses of tiny birds vanishing into thick foliage or undergrowth. Blackbirds were plentiful at the beginning. The new sightings came mostly when we were in the forest towards the Cascades end of the trail.
There I saw my first parrot—a swift parrot—high in the trees. It had a red forehead and throat, breast that showed a little yellow before becoming green, and was dark, or perhaps mottled, green on the back. I was looking straight up at it, watching it move in parrot-fashion from branch to branch, and saw the red under its tail.
In the same spot there were yellow wattlebirds and a pair of black-faced cuckoo-shrikes—not actually cuckoos since they don’t lay their eggs in other birds’ nests. In fact they were building a nest in the fork of a branch high overhead, flying back and forth from a stump to the branch. They are a lovely pale grey on the back and head, with black face and throat, and white breast and belly. Long-tails, white underneath, but with black edges. In the shade on the stump the back took on a blue tinge.
Two strong-billed honeyeaters flew among the treetops a little further on. I watched one of them moving somewhat like a brown creeper in the dangling bark of a gum tree. The call was a peep peep peep
Where the trail dropped down closer to the water again a cascade of song yielded a superb fairy-wren, and while we watched it a bird flashed by quite close and landed on the far side of a trunk, then generously fanned its tail wide to identify itself as a grey fantail.
We came back at a quicker pace. I saw a small brown bird with a white belly moving somewhat like a kinglet and about that size. It was pale underneath, with stripes at its throat, had a round black eye and black beak. Perhaps it was an olive whistler.
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