Trip reports

"Australia & New Zealand"

Tuesday, 5 May 2009

Our speaker John Britten started his journey in Sydney, which has many parks and open spaces as well as scrub, forest, cliff habitats and ocean within the city boundaries. A huge number of birds can be seen within the area, from silver gulls and pelicans on Bondai Beach to kites and cockatoos in the parks.

Many Australian birds are incorrectly named as early settlers called them after birds they had seen at home; so the magpie is not a magpie and the magpie lark is neither magpie nor lark. Every black and white bird is either magpie- or pied-, all very confusing.

We then moved north to Darwin. Here, the remains of an attempt to create rice paddies (destroyed by magpie geese) has been turned into a flooded area, which is good for birds like jacanas. At the end of the dry season there is little water but when the rains come, the land floods for hundreds of miles. Then on to Cairns, and the esplanade, where numerous waders feed in the mud. The cemetery is also a good place to see birds like bush thicknee, peaceful dove and sunbird. There is also an area of rainforest, home to the rare cassawary and duck billed platypus.

In New Zealand we visited Tiritiri Matangi Island Reserve where all rats, dogs, cats and possums have been removed to protect flightless and ground nesting birds. Rare species like the takate are bred for repopulation programmes. South Island has albatrosses, petrels and the kia, a parrot noted for its destructive habits. We ended the evening on Stewart Island, which is home to a small community not unlike the Scillies, looking for the nocturnal kiwi.
A brief look at a very different and diverse continent.