Gavin Bieber on his recently completed Australia: Victoria & Tasmania tour.
Our inaugural 17-day tour of Southeastern Australia encompassed an amazing variety of landscapes and over 270 species of birds. We started around the cosmopolitan city of Melbourne, where we spent a productive day along the coastal wetlands which held a wealth of waterfowl like this Australian Wood Duck and local leaders helped us track down birds like Powerful Owl and nesting Tawny Frogmouths.
Australian Wood Duck
Powerful Owl
Tawny Frogmouth
Then we headed north through the Great Dividing Range where we enjoyed a Superb Lyrebird stomping through the tree-fern clad temperate rainforests.
Superb Lyrebird
Around Chiltern we found conditions to be extremely wet, but these Sugar Gliders seemed warm and snug in their nest box.
Sugar Gliders
The wet and unseasonably cold weather persisted throughout the entire spring of 2016, but at Deniliquin we were able to access the right paddocks to locate this beautiful female Plains-Wanderer despite the conditions.
Plains Wanderer
We then headed west towards the more wild Northwest corner of Victoria and its large Mallee and desert parks, stopping to admire gems like this striking White-winged Fairy-Wren and this stunning Major Mitchell’s Cockatoo along the way.
White-winged Fairy-Wren
Major Mitchell’s Cockatoo
We found NW Victoria still locked in the grips of an extended winter, with repeated cold fronts dropping unprecedented rains and high winds across much of the region. The birds were still around though, and many seemed to be in full breeding mode, such as this handsome Malleefowl.
Malleefowl
Reaching the Victoria coastline, truly one of the most scenic parts of the country, we sought out birds like this skulking Rufous Bristlebird in the heathland, and enjoyed repeated views of the surprisingly common Rainbow Lorikeet.
Victoria coastline
Rufous Bristlebird
Rainbow Lorikeet
The tour wrapped up with a short but excellent trip to Tasmania, where we located all of the Tasmanian endemics such as this Green Rosella, enjoyed intimate views of the ethereally white form of Gray Goshawk, and scoured the beautiful coastline for shorebirds like Black-faced Cormorant (our 5th species of Cormorant for the tour) and the menacing Pacific Gull.
Tasmanian Coast
Green Rosella
Gray Goshawk
Black-faced Cormorant
Pacific Gull
Although we were admittedly hampered a bit by the highly unusual weather it was a fantastic trip, with 272 species of birds and 18 mammals including Koala, Echidna and Greater Glider and one that I am very much looking forward to repeating in 2018.