Over the past week there have been some beautiful clear, still days, and it certainly feels that spring is in the air.
I spent a few days in Castlemaine last week, and it was minus 2 degrees overnight, but the weather during the day was glorious.
I did get a chance to venture to the Geelong Botanic Gardens to look for the brown gerygone that has been spotted there recently. I didn’t see this elusive bird, but did spot a pink robin, a few yellow-faced honeyeaters, and many eastern spinebills.
I had a lovely time wandering around the gardens even though I didn’t spot the target bird.
I also enjoyed wandering around the Castlemaine Botanical Gardens, where I spotted one of the two powerful owls that live in the gardens. One day the owl had a very large ring-tailed possum in its talons.
Powerful owls specialise in preying on medium to large tree-dwelling mammals, especially possums, bats and gliders. They can often be spotted holding on to their prey while roosting during the day.
Also at the Castlemaine Botanical Gardens there was a family of mallard ducks in the large pond. Mallards were introduced many years ago to Australia from the Northern Hemisphere.
Australian native Pacific black ducks and the introduced mallards are closely related species, and have similar behaviours, and occupy the same environments. When both species are present, they have been known to commonly crossbreed to produce fertile hybrid ducks.
I spotted a very unusual duck that had similar colours to a mallard but had the streaked facial features of a Pacific black duck, so definitely looked like a hybrid between the two species.
On the way home from Castlemaine I stopped off at two of my favourite places, namely the Rise and Shine Nature Reserve near Newstead and the Stony Creek Picnic Area near Anakie.
I saw yellow-tufted honeyeaters in both places. At the Rise and Shine I saw a family of beautiful brown treecreepers and at Stony Creek I saw a white-throated treecreeper as well as a posing grey-shrike thrush.
The white-throated treecreeper was a male bird as it lacked the orange marks that the females have on the sides of the face.
I have spotted a laughing kookaburra around the corner from my house in Ocean Grove over the past few weeks in the area behind the Shell Road shops.
The local magpies haven’t been very welcoming to the poor kookaburra and have been chasing it around the gum trees not letting it relax in the habitat, so I doubt if it will hang around for too long.
