TAWNY FROGMOUTHS - BANYULE FLATS RESERVE

When summer finally arrived in December, we headed out for a walk at the lovely Banyule Flats Reserve in suburban Melbourne, Australia. Finding tawny frogmouths was a real bonus!

This was just our second visit to Banyule Flats Reserve, even though its wide open spaces (just under fifty hectares) are very accessible, and only twelve kilometres from the city centre. It's a brilliant pretty flat walk, and you can head off to the left or right of the car park. 

We headed left first, and pretty soon, met a family of tawny frogmouths - mum, dad and two kids - resting happily in the sunshine. Their expressions radiated quiet contentment. Their trick is to make themselves look like an old piece of bark while they hide in plain sight.

We thought it couldn’t get much better but next on the track we spotted a female mistletoe bird, very active at eye level on a trackside tree. We could see the flash of red on her lower underbody.

Further along, a colony of white-browed scrub wrens in the low foliage provided plenty of entertainment.

One of the things we love about birding is the people you meet: telltale signs are other walkers with binoculars and or cameras...they always seem to readily offer up intel about what they or others have seen. We were advised that a wedge-tailed eagle is often seen around the power lines (turns out these appear after you pass the golf course, but we didn't see an eagle on that day).

We also met a lovely couple who reported that they had heard but not seen sacred kingfishers near the bridge (just before the golf course). We looked at each other a bit puzzled...we didn't actually know what a kingfisher call sounded like. Now we do: four or five quick sharp cheeps...

What a beauty...click any image below to enlarge the photos.

Plenty of silvereyes were darting among the low bushes.

On our way back towards the car (and lunch!) we heard a fracas suggesting a raptor was around. We didn't see any, but these sulphur-crested cockatoos are never shy about announcing their presence.

We had a look around the swamp, turning right from the car park, but there wasn't much doing, nor were there any rosellas or red-trumped parrots about when we were there, but we did see a kookaburra, and we never get tired of those lovely birds!