On Saturday 31th August, 13 people participated in a bird walk in Melton Gilgai Woodland in Harkness Road, hosted by MEG.
Although it was the last day of winter, it was a beautiful spring day, with blue skies & warm sunshine. Flo, Geraldine, Brian, Daryl & Nora of MEG were joined by Josephine, a family from St Albans & three ladies from Williamstown.
Melton Gilgai is remnant Grey Box/Yellow Gum woodland, managed by City of Melton, only a few hundred metres from Long Forest Mallee, with which it shares many bird species. We saw 16 bird species (of a total of 71 bird species have been observed here to date). We saw the large mob of over 100 kangaroos that lives here, as they moved out of the woodland at our approach. However, they remained a short distance from the trees, watching our progress; no doubt waiting for us to leave.
We saw 18 bird species including:
- Black Faced Cuckoo-shrike
- White-plumed Honeyeater
- Yellow-rumped Thornbill
- Dusky Woodswallow
- Red Wattlebird
- Pied Currawong
- Jacky Winter
- Eastern Rosella
- Common Bronzewing
- Magpie
- Raven
- Chough
- Noisy Miner
- Magpie-lark
- Willy Wagtail
- Galah
- Crimson Rosella
- Crested Pigeon
Unfortunately we were a few weeks early to see the springtime wildflower spectacular, as they are late this year. However, we still saw many wildflowers, including purple Indigofera, Gold-dust Wattle, a few bushpeas (yellow Eutaxia diffusa & orange Eutaxia microphylla), mauve New Holland Daisies, blue Wahlenbergias, pink Pigface & pale yellow Clematis. Later in September we should see a spectacular array of bushpeas here (Eutaxia & Templetonia).
