The Golden Whistler Volume 8 Number 7 July 2019 PRESIDENT'S REPORT NEXT OUTING Birdwatching can be so much fun. Camped on a DATE: Saturday 24th August river bank we were alerted by a cacophony of LOCATION: Southern Grampians squawking that soon showed itself as four Grey- crowned Babblers. Babblers as most of you know MET: Dunkeld Tourist Info Centre are very aptly named but this noise was rather TIME: 9am extraordinary. What on earth were they up to? BRING: BYO drinks, snacks, lunch and chair Creeping along, camera in hand, we soon found the problem. The next camp over was a kombi/camper CONTACT: Sally Purnell 0407 864 545 vehicle with very clean hubcaps. You can picture what was up. Outings will be cancelled on days of Total Fire Ban, Extreme Heat and other Hazadous Weather conditions All four birds were convinced that they were being attacked by unknown babblers and were very loudly defending their territory. One bird seemed to have a bit more 'bird brain' than the others and would sometimes circle around the tyre looking for the intruders but then would return and attack the Striated Fieldwren © Kevin Williams hubcap even more crossly. We stood and watched for a long time and then left them to it. It was a delightful interlude that left us with grins on our faces. CONTENTS: Happy Birding 2. Outing report & bird list Susan 3. Prehistoric bird 4. Sightings 5. Local activities & Quiz 6.Up Coming Event BirdLife Hamilton monthly newsletter, Editor Samantha Greiner 0428 395 773 Outing Report PANYYABYR LANDCARE & WALKER SWAMP BIRD HIDE TOWER OPENING Our winter indoor meeting started in Dunkeld at the Glenelg Nature Trust, Hamilton Field Naturalists and Off the Rails community art centre. Dot and Paul Glenelg Hopkins CMA have put an enormous had arrived early to set up seating and decorate amount of time and energy into making Walkers with some of Dot's lovely bird photography prints in Swamp function as a near natural ecosystem again. the repurposed old railway station building. We could see these efforts are starting to pay off from the number of bird species we recorded on the Once the seating was rearranged to accommodate day. As if by prior arrangement a pair of Brolga flew the data projector, Craig Oliver from the Panyyabyr into the wetland. Well done and thank you for Land Care Group gave us a very entertaining and stepping in to fill Greg Kerr's absence Bryan, Lucie informative talk. Some key projects they have and Nicole, from NGT. undertaken are Trees to River, planting native vegetation back into the landscape, (along the Samantha Wannon River covering 350ha or 860 acres over nine years and ongoing), and the fox control under the Grampian Ark program in conjunction with Parks Victoria and Glenelg Hopkins Catchment Management Authority. The best program though has been the partnership with BirdLife Hamilton and the Woodland Bird surveys Dave Nichols initiated. Started five years ago, Woodland Birds generated a large amount of interest from many sectors of the Community, bringing many new people to Landcare functions in the local area. After Craig we had Dave Nichols give us a talk on Walker Swamp carpark and bird hide tower © S Greiner the Glenelg Hopkins CMA perspective of the joint Walker Swamp Fresh Water Lake activities both groups participated in. This involved some instructive pictures of the Landcare Group and Emu Pacific Black Duck BirdLife members demonstrating the correct Australian Shelduck White-faced Heron procedures, equipment and techniques for Australian Wood Duck Whistling Kite successful bird watching. Australasian Shoveler Rainbow Lorikeet Grey Teal Crimson Rosella Pacific Black Duck Laughing Kookaburra Hardhead White-throated Treecreeper Wedge-tailed Eagle Superb Fairy-wren Little Eagle White-browed Scrubwren Brolga Striated Thornbill Masked Lapwing Brown Thornbill Silver Gull Spotted Pardalote Panyyabyr Landcare & BirdLife Hamilton members demonstrating Long-billed Corella Yellow-faced Honeyeater advanced bird watching skills © D Nichol Crimson Rosella White-eared Honeyeater After a lovely morning tea and a big thank you to all Laughing Kookaburra Red Wattlebird who brought something along to share, we followed Bryan Haywood from Glenelg Nature Trust out to Striated Thornbill New Holland Honeyeater Walkers Swamp. Found on the floodplain of the Red Wattlebird Brown-headed Honeyeater Wannon River, this wetland has recently been Grey Shrike-thrush Australian Magpie restored after being drained in an attempt to open Australian Magpie Grey Currawong up the floodplain for agricultural land use, and more recently as a failed Blue Gum forestry plantation. Forest Raven Scarlet Robin We had been invited to celebrate the opening of the Eurasian Skylark Red-browed Finch refurbished tower bird hide and to contribute to the Welcome Swallow 21 species ongoing list of bird species found at the swamp. Tree Martin Total 40 species for day 23 species 2 July 2019 Media Report SQUAWKZILLA THE METRE-TALL PARROT ATE NUTS, BERRIES - AND OTHER PARROTS By Liam Mannix August 7, 2019 It was a parrot half as tall as a human. Using its Nowadays the region is hilly, with streams cutting huge, sharp beak it ate other parrots and nuts and through it and is a rich source of fossils. A team of berries. It was too fat to fly. They call it palaeontologists from Flinders and several other "Squawkzilla". universities have been working the area for the past 20 years. It is, scientists announced on Wednesday, the largest parrot ever discovered. Squawkzilla’s bones were found while the team were digging into mudstone in the side of a hill. A volunteer took dirt and mud from the dig down to a stream and washed it in a sieve. The cold waters washed the dirt away – leaving behind two enormous leg bones, broken into five pieces. Initially, Professor Worthy thought they were probably eagle bones, so they were placed in a drawer and ignored. But later, when he got them back out and inspected them, he realised that wasn’t quite right. Bones have specific marks where the muscles and ligaments are attached. These bones did not have the right attachment marks for an eagle. An artist's impression of Heracles inexpectatus.Credit:Brian Choo, Flinders University The team checked the attachment mark pattern against every other known species of bird. Only one Trevor Worthy was so surprised when he discovered ended up fitting: the parrot. its fossilised remains he called it Heracles inexpectatus. Unexpected Hercules. It’s not known why Heracles inexpectatus died out, but there were major changes to New Zealand’s "Because it’s unexpected," he says, "to find a giant climate about 12 million years ago. parrot." The bird lived during the Mid-Miocene Climatic Squawkzilla lived in New Zealand about 19 million Optimum, a period when New Zealand was warm, years ago. wet and rich in life. The South Island’s lack of predators for several The earth then went through a 200,000-year period million years allowed evolution to experiment with a of cooling known as the Middle Miocene disruption. variety of enormous birds, such as the now-extinct New Zealand most likely would have lost many of Moa, an emu-like bird which stood about two the trees in the forests that fed Squawkzilla, and metres tall and weighed more than 250 kilograms, the bird would have died off. and Squawkzilla. The creature roamed the undergrowth, feeding off nuts and berries that fell from trees. Its huge beak meant it probably also ate any small animals or birds that were unlucky enough cross its path. Squawkzilla’s bones were found at a site near St Bathans in Central Otago. Associate Professor Burns' team announced in Biology Letters they were from a giant parrot. Millions of years ago the area was covered in a deep lake. Squawkzilla probably died on the shores of the lake, where water would have washed sediment over its body, preserving it. One big parrot, Paul Scofield, Canterbury Museum July 2019 3 Sightings Rod Bird Arborline Nursery, Hamilton Shorebirds 2020 winter surveys: Heard first spring Horsfield's Bronze-cuckoo, 29.07.19 120 Double-banded Plover at Killarney Beach, Rutledge Cutting, 18.07.19 8 Varied Sittella in boundary pine trees, 31.07.19 155 Double-banded Plover, 47 Red-capped Jean & Peter Humphries Plover & 15 Red-necked Stint on the east beach, Lake Linlithgow, Croxton East, 19.07.19 Highlights from June visit to NT 104 Double-banded Plover, 36 Red-capped Blue-winged Kookaburra at Leaning Tree Lagoon Plover and 1 Red-necked Stint, The Green Double-barred Finch, Comb-crested Jacana, Swamp Wildlife Reserve, Glenthompson, 25.07.19 Lemon-bellied Flyrobin & Torresian Crow at Mamukala Wetlands Annie Carmichael Olive Backed Oriole, Blue-faced Honeyeater, Brown Falcon, Eulo, Qld, 24.06.19 White-winged Triller (family) and Red-winged Parrot at Mary River Holiday Resort Kevin Wood Farm Glenelg Hwy, Mountajup in last 2 months The Singing Honeyeater returned, 3 pairs of Flame Robin over 100 Tree Martin returned after wintering in the north, White-faced Heron are nesting in the old Pine Tree and male Superb Fairy-wren have put on their bold blue breeding colours. Kay & Kevin Williams Charlotte Davis 1 White-bellied Sea-eagle, Lake Hamilton, 22.07.19 1 Swamp Harrier Flax Mill Swamp, Strathkellar, 27.07.19 CALL FOR NEOPHEMA PARROTS SIGHTINGS Rob Drummond Wanted all sightings of Orange-bellied & Blue-wing 1 Grey (White) Goshawk on the corner of Eddy Parrot sightings from South West Victoria. Please and Fenton Streets, chasing unidentified birds into include location, date and number of birds seen. one of the trees behind the buildings, Hamilton, 02.08.19 Nicole is particularly interested in Blue-wings sightings after the recent Winter OBP surveys Samantha Greiner showed a large fall in sighting of these birds.