Worth Two in the Bush: SOUTH COAST ORCHESTRA TOUR

On the Queen's Birthday long weekend, from Friday 7th June to Monday 10th June, I toured parts of Southern New South Wales with the Peter Seymour Orchestra of Sydney Youth Orchestras.

We left at 9 or 9:30ish on Friday morning to get to Beverley Hills station to pick up a few members of the orchestra at around 10ish. On the way we drove over a bridge over Eastlakes Golf Course which served quite nicely as I ticked of numerous waterbirds such as Eurasian Coot, Chestnut Teal, Black Swan, Hardhead, Pacific black Duck, Australasian Grebe and others. Also to add to that, a Black Shouldered Kite was seen as well as a group of 30 Silvereye, one Brown Honeyeater and a flock of Starlings.

On the road down to Goulburn after stopping at Beverley Hills Station where I happily watched a group of Figbirds, Noisy Minerswhere we spent our first day and night, I observed five Wedge-Tailed Eagles from the bus, 2 Black Shouldered Kite, one Brown Goshawk, a Brown Falcon, one Black Kite, two Whistling Kites, a Kestrel and to my delight a Dark Morph Little Eagle. On arriving in Goulburn, 100 Straw Necked Ibis flew over the bus, incredibly high up, with another 100 at least flying low over the houses a couple of minutes later.
Little Ravens were all over Mulwaree School where we rehearsed Haydn's 92nd Symphony and some of Mozart's 35th. White-winged Choughs were also seen and photographed. As I know I can blab on about this for ages, every now and then I'll just chuck in the time so you can work out exactly when things happened - the rehearsal at the school was at around 12pm, Friday morning.

CHOUGHS!!!

The trip to our camp at Santa Sabia College, Tallong, another black kite was observed along with one wedgie and a kestrel was seen on a tree nibbling what looked like a large lizard - hard to tell when you are barrelling past at 100km/h in a huge bus!!! 25 Glossy Black Cockatoos were also seen flying right past the windows, one narrowly missed the bus and overall around 8 White Necked Heron were seen on the farms on the way. On arrival at around 5pm-ish, White Throated Treecreepers and a couple of Eastern Rosellas were very vocal along with a couple of Yellow Tailed Black Cockatoos flying over, calling.

After settling into cabins, we headed out to dinner and then hopped onto the coaches, and headed back to Mulwaree for our performance arriving at around 6:30pm. Our performance was alright, much could be improved and the birdlife was dead boring, probably something to do with me being right at the back of the bus in pitch blackness. The highlight on the return was a Common Wombat trundling along in front of the bus near the camp and a Boobook calling.

The following morning I woke up bright and early, put on my jumper, jumper, jumper, jacket, gloves and beanie and headed out in to the deep freeze of the southern highlands armed with a spotlight and camera at around 5am. Not one nocturnal bird was seen, but I swear I heard a group of Bush-Stone Curlew wailing in the distance...
The first bird spotlighted was awkwardly a White-eared Honeyeater, which even more awkwardly was a lifer!!! I took a couple of photos, none of which focused properly.

White-eared Honeyeater

The birds slowly came to life from then. King Parrot, Crimson Rosella and Rainbow Lorikeet screeching and wailing for the parrots with a couple of Yellow Tails joining in later on. A Red-Browed Finch flew right past my face and numerous White Browed Scrubwren dominated the forest floor. Other honeyeaters were calling such as Yellow Faced and Lewin's and another two White Throated Treecreepers showed nicely. A Crimson Rosella flew onto a branch in a clearing but a long way away, and I snapped a few shots due to the beautiful light on the bird. Grey Shrike Thrush, Whipbird and Lyrebird were all seen and heard.