Influence of the drought on birding in Sydney              Spring 2003

The drought has been with us for the best part of twelve months and has been getting progressively worse. Recent rainfall in some parts has had little positive impact. At this point in time over 95% of NSW has been officially declared as drought areas, that is virtually everything west of the Great Divide. There are also large areas of southern Queensland drought affected. As a result, many of the swamps and lagoons and water courses in these areas are now dry, bushland is tinder dry, many trees are noticeably stressed and there have been few signs of flowering gums.

Many of the birds that normally inhabit these inland areas to the west and north of Sydney and the coastal fringe have had to find food elsewhere. They move south and east and have been showing up in and around Sydney. Unusually large numbers of waterbirds and waders have been recorded, such as Red-kneed Dotterel, Glossy Ibis, Australian Spotted Crake, Baillon’s Crake and as many as 500 Sharp-tailed Sandpipers on some of the lagoons and swamps in the Hawkesbury Valley just to the north west of Sydney. In with the latter there has been a sprinkling of four or five Pectoral Sandpipers. Marsh Sandpipers have been much more common than in normal years. Freckled Duck have been present at several locations for twelve months now with an unheard of high count of 22 birds at Pitt Town lagoon for a while. Whiskered Terns have been seen virtually everywhere. Black-tailed Native-hens, a Ruff, a Wood Sandpiper and five Little Curlews have put in appearances in the Hawkesbury area, as have extreme rarities such as a Buff-breasted Sandpiper and two Yellow Wagtails.

In Sydney itself a Comb-crested Jacana made a brief visit to Lake Parramatta, only the third one in the Sydney area in the last 60 years. Currently there are over 50 Red-necked Avocet at Bicentennial Park, only a few kilometres from the CBD.

Many passerines also appear to have been affected. Three or four months ago several very large flocks of White-browed Woodswallows were noticed over the Sydney area and with them significant numbers of Masked Woodswallow. These are species normally seen west of the Great Dividing Range. Every year during the breeding season small numbers of Rufous Songlark, Brown Songlark and Singing Bushlark frequent the agricultural areas in the Hawkesbury Valley, but this year there have been many more. Normally Budgerigars do not breed within a six-hour drive of Sydney, yet this season they have bred three hours drive west in the Capertree valley. During the last month large numbers of Black Honeyeater, Pied Honeyeater and Painted Honeyeater have been seen in the Riverina district around Leeton, a three- to four-hour drive southwest of Sydney. This is well to the east of their normal range.

In some ways it has been an exciting year because one has never known what one is going to find, but it has at the same time been a disturbing one because of the significantly reduced numbers of normal bush birds in our woods and forests. Only time will tell what the long term impact of this severe drought will be on our bird populations.

Tony Dymond