As well as all of Australia’s wonderful birds our tour also seeks out its unique mammals including the always-popular Koala. Photo: David Fisher
This tour to Victoria, southern New South Wales, and Tasmania passes through a wide variety of habitats and climates. The Victoria countryside may seem reassuringly familiar after two centuries of European settlement, but the birds that inhabit it are anything but. Large flocks of parrots feed along the highways, and multicolored fairy-wrens and honeyeaters fill the woods, while kangaroos graze in the paddocks and Koalas look down from giant eucalyptus trees. The area around Deniliquin in southern New South Wales seems much wilder, almost the outback, with major ornithological attractions including the almost mythical Plains-wanderer. Tasmania holds many endemics, even flightless species such as the Tasmanian Native Hen.
The dates given below for our Tasmania and Victoria tour are from Melbourne and to Melbourne. This tour can be taken in conjunction with our tour of South Australia and Northern Territory, followed by our tour of Queensland and New South Wales.
David Fisher first visited Australia in 1985, and this will be his twenty-fifth WINGS tour there.
Day 1: Our tour starts in Melbourne at 2:00 pm with an excursion to a local park to see our first colorful Australian birds, including Galahs, Sulphur-crested Cockatoos, Red-rumped Parrots, and Laughing Kookaburras. Along with those and other widespread species, in previous years this park has also produced less common birds including Tawny Frogmouth, Purple-crowned Lorikeet, Crested Shrike-Tit, and Varied Sittella. Night near Melbourne airport.
Day 2: Today we’ll visit the area southwest of Melbourne, starting at Brisbane Ranges National Park in search of Koalas and a good selection of bush birds. A small swamp near Geelong may reveal Latham’s Snipe, which spends the northern winter here, and a variety of waterfowl, including the beautiful Chestnut Teal. Then we’ll drive down spectacular Great Ocean Road to Airey’s Inlet, where we’ll look for the local Rufous Bristlebird; seawatching from a nearby headland may reveal a graceful Shy Albatross or two. On the way back to Melbourne we’ll stop at Weribee in search of Striated Fieldwren skulking in the saltmarsh; we might also find a pair of Brolga, an endangered crane species that is now rare in Victoria. Night in Melbourne.
Day 3: After breakfast we’ll head east towards Healesville, where we’ll be spending the next two nights. Along the way we’ll stop to look at a vast “camp” of Gray-headed Flying-Foxes: thousands of these amazing creatures roost in an area of parkland on the edge of the city. We should arrive in Healesville in time for lunch, and then in the afternoon we’ll visit Toolangi State Forest in search of Gang-gang Cockatoo, Pink Robin, Pilotbird, and Olive Whistler, and to marvel at the ancient Mountain Ash trees, some of them over 200 feet tall. Night in Healesville.
Day 4: This morning we’ll make a very early start to visit Badger Weir, where the great attraction is Superb Lyrebird, indisputably the world’s most remarkable mimic. This is a bird that is easy to hear but hard to see. While walking the forest tracks in search of the great mimic, we should see Rose Robin and the spectacular Eastern Spinebill. After breakfast we’ll visit a local park where the abundant Australian King Parrots and Common Bronzewings provide excellent photographic opportunities. We’ll also see an active bower of Satin Bowerbird, where we will see how the male decorates the bower with blue items in order to entice the females to visit and mate with him. In the afternoon we’ll visit a local lake in search of Blue-billed Duck and other waterbirds. After dinner there will be an optional spotlighting trip in search of Sooty Owl; we should see Greater Glider and, with luck, a Yellow-bellied Glider as well. Night in Healesville.
Day 5: If lyrebirds eluded us the day before, we’ll have another chance to look for them and any other species we might still be missing. After breakfast we’ll drive north to Chiltern, arriving in the early afternoon. The recently designated Chiltern-Mt. Pilot National Park was created in 1997 to protect the box-ironbark forest that once covered much of northeast Victoria. The park is home to one of the few scattered populations of the endangered Regent Honeyeater, and we’ll search for this scarce species in the afternoon. Other birds that we hope to see include Turquoise Parrot and Fuscous, Black-throated, and Painted Honeyeaters, the last a truly beautiful bird in its own genus. Night in Chiltern.
Day 6: We’ll spend the morning visiting various sites around Chiltern, perhaps including the national park and certainly including a private property where we’ll search for Speckled Warbler. We’ll visit several lakes that hold a good variety of waterfowl, including Australian Shoveler and Hardhead. After an early lunch we’ll drive west to Deniliquin, where we’ll spend two nights. There are many species to be seen in this area, but the main reason for visiting Deniliquin is to search for Plains-wanderer, a unique species in its own family. This cryptic, buttonquail-like bird will be our principal focus, and by driving at night across the short-grass native pasturelands, accompanied by local expert Phil Maher, we have a very good chance of finding this fascinating and hard-to-see bird. Other possibilities on our night drive include Banded Lapwing, Inland Dotterel, Stubble Quail, and Little Button-quail. Night in Deniliquin.
Day 7: Our start time this morning will depend on how late we stayed out the previous night. No matter when we arise, we’ll spend the day in the Deniliquin area searching for specialties that we are unlikely to see elsewhere during our tour, such as Australasian Bittern, Superb Parrot, Crested Shrike-tit, and Gilbert’s Whistler. In the evening we’ll have a second chance for Plains-wanderer if we missed it the night before. Night in Deniliquin.
Day 8: We’ll spend another morning birding with Phil around Deniliquin, searching for such species as Apostlebird and Striped Honeyeater. In the afternoon we’ll drive south to Melbourne, where we’ll spend the night.
Day 9: We’ll catch an early morning flight to Hobart in Tasmania, then drive south to Bruny Island. We’ll stop to look for our first Tasmanian endemics, perhaps including noisy Yellow Wattlebirds and Yellow-throated and Strong-billed Honeyeaters. We’ll catch a ferry to the island, stopping first at the terminal to look at the Black-faced Cormorants on the harbor-side pylons. All of Tasmania’s endemics occur on Bruny Island, most of them on the property owned by our local guide. We’ll spend the afternoon walking around her private estate, looking in particular for Green Rosella, Dusky Robin, and Forty-spotted Pardalote. Night on Bruny Island.
Day 10: We’ll spend a delightful day searching the forests and farmland of Bruny Island for endemics: the enormous flightless Tasmanian Native-Hen, the diminutive Tasmanian Scrubwren, Scrub-Tit, Tasmanian Thornbill, and Black-headed Honeyeater. We’ll also search for a number of species that are easier to find here than on the Australian mainland, including Hooded Plover, Brush Bronzewing, Swift Parrot, Flame Robin, Crescent Honeyeater, and Forest Raven. Tasmania is famous for its more intact marsupial fauna—there are fewer introduced predators here—so after dinner there will be an optional night-drive mostly in search of mammals including Bennett’s Wallaby, Rufous-bellied Pademelon, Long-nosed Poteroo, and Eastern Quoll. We’ll also visit a bustling Little Penguin colony and see our first Short-tailed Shearwaters. Night on Bruny Island.
Day 11: The final Tasmanian endemic, Black Currawong, winters on Bruny Island, and by the time of our visit they may have all left for the Tasmanian mainland. Today’s itinerary will be flexible to accommodate that possibility; if there are none left on Bruny, we’ll return to Hobart in the morning and drive up to the currawong’s breeding areas in Mount Field National Park. In the late afternoon we’ll catch a flight back to Melbourne, where we will spend the night.
Day 12: The tour ends this morning after breakfast. Those joining our tour of South Australia and Northern Territory will catch a morning flight to Adelaide.
Updated: 30 November 2009
Prices
- 2010 price about $5,040
- Single Occupancy Supplement $530
Notes
This tour is limited to eight participants with one leader, 16 with two leaders. If a second leader is needed, it wll be Judy Davis.
This tour is organized by our British company, Sunbird.