The daylight hours are shorter and nights are cooler, which has prompted some movements of birds from mountainous regions to the Bellarine.
I haven’t seen any reports of flame robins around the area yet, but I did spot a few eastern spinebills in my local park.
Eastern spinebills are mostly sedentary, but they do undergo some local movements away from higher elevations in autumn and winter. They are such a lovely bird so it’s great to see them around the corner from where I live.
The eastern spinebill is most easily recognisable by its long, down-curved bill.
These birds have a brisk flight between shrubs, and in flight the white outer tail feathers are obvious. Males have a grey-black crown, which extends in a black line to the breast. I love these birds, but they are so hard to photograph, especially where there is a thick cover of shrubs.
I walked around the farm in Wallington last week and managed to see the family of weebills that are always in the yellow gums on a small patch of the farm.
These birds are one of the smallest birds in Australia, and their name comes from the short, stout, pale beak. Their eyes are almost white, and their plumage is dull grey, brown on the head and olive-brown on the back, with yellow underparts. They have a pale line above the eye.
These birds are not commonly seen around the Bellarine, and it does astound me that they just seem to survive in such a small patch of gum trees, and that they haven’t been predated upon in that area.
I also spotted a fan-tailed cuckoo, and the pair of wedge-tailed eagles that seem to have made the farm their home.
I received an email from Carole. Carole was watched as she walked along the dog beach in Ocean Grove. A black-shouldered kite was hovering over the dunes and the low-lying tea trees for quite a long time. It mustn’t have seen anything tasty as it didn’t dive but moved along towards Point Lonsdale stopping every now and then.
