We continued to scan the trees near the billabong, and one of the kids shouted “Possum!”. We all trained our torches on the branch and I thought to myself, “what a tiny Possum – perhaps it’s a joey”, until it dawned on me that it was actually a Sugar Glider. That’s right folks: a Sugar Glider, in suburbia!
As we followed the winding road higher and higher into the mountains, our guide suddenly called out to the driver “STOP!”. We quickly pulled over to a clearing overlooking a valley, and she said “Pheasant Coucal! Look there”, pointing to a tree not 4m away from the bus.
The Western Treatment Plant is perhaps the premier birding site in Victoria, Australia, with more than 280 species being recorded, and it’s definitely one of our favourites. We try to visit it at least four times per year (once per season), usually prompted by reports of relatively rare birds. (Here is a blog post about the ‘poo…
Imka and I are originally from Trinidad and Tobago: a twin-island republic in the southern Caribbean. The larger island of Trinidad is approximately 5,000 sq km in area (roughly 100km by 50km), and the longest stretch of freeway is 45km long. So imagine how awestruck we were when we had just moved to Australia and made our…
After reading multiple reports over the past fortnight of Azure Kingfishers being spotted along the Yarra River, I was determined to see one, and so planned a multi-stop birding day out in bushland within an hour’s drive from Melbourne’s CBD. The weather forecast called for a 50% chance of a light drizzle in the morning,…
A friend over at The Research Whisperer blog once told me that a good blog post is written in a conversational tone. I have tried to take this advice on board, but more than a decade of working in the research space has had its effect on my writing style: it still has a matter-of-fact and impersonal…
The Western Treatment Plant never ceases to thrill birders with migrants, vagrants, and rarities. On 11 September 2015, the Victorian birding world was abuzz with the first ever report of an Eastern Osprey at ‘the Plant’, and since the birding Mecca was just a hop, skip and jump away, we were determined to try our…
[Disclaimer: Our Tamron 150-600mm lens was being serviced, so we had to settle for a Canon SX50 ‘point and shoot’, as well as a Panasonic Lumix FZ200, hence the substandard quality of photos in this blog post.] Whenever there’s a long weekend in Melbourne, we always try to bird further afield. So, on the newly announced ‘Footy Grand…
This is the third post in a series about short, ad-hoc, unrewarding, or repeat birding trips. As always, we had lots of fun being outdoors, and we have a few not-so-good photos that are worth sharing. Bunyip State Park – October 2014, March 2015 Bunyip State Park is probably one of the most diverse parks that we…
We last saw Swift Parrots in 2014 when they made an appearance in the carpark of La Trobe University (Bundoora), so I was eagerly awaiting their return to a nearby suburb – I love it when I don’t need to venture too far from my cosy bedroom in winter to see majestic birds! 🙂 In late April…
Birding Lovers 