Check my birding map for specific location.
I drove north from Walpole for around an hour and half through thick forest. The road was a sliver through dense trees and it was magical. I don't remember Western Australia being so lush but the forests feel healthy and bursting with life. I came out of the trees and was thrust into wine making country. I almost felt like I had been transported to rural France. The pastoral land was just as pretty as the drizzle lifted. Just before I reached the town of Pemberton I turned into the track towards Big Brook Dam and just beyond that was the campsite.
I am loving travelling at this time of year. It is nice and cool, the roads are quiet and the campsites have few people in them. It was the same here. The site was a clearing in the forest and I could immediately hear bird song from high up in the canopy. A family of magpie squabbled and squawked around the camp. It was very lovely but I knew birding would be difficult. The drizzle had returned and the tall trees would make things challenging.
I first walked to the Arboretum and marvelled at the variety and beauty of the trees. They seemed to all be planted in 1935 and I wondered what life would have been like for the people who planted them. It was that kind of nostalgic place. I could hear Rufous Treecreeper calling from high up with their distinctive 'pink pink' song. Grey Fantail were all around me, flitting about catching bugs.
Photography was next to impossible under these conditions but fortune smiled on me once again when a male Scarlet Robin landed right in front of me. My first one for my 2022 trip. I rattled off 3 shots and only 1 landed. But that was all I needed.
Scarlet Robin (Petroica boodang)
I walked along the road next towards the dam and there was so much activity with fairywren, thornbill and scrubwren all darting in and out of cover. A Laughing Kookaburra watched on with seeming disdain.
Laughing Kookaburra (Dacelo novaeguineae)
And that was it. I would like to say I will go back when the weather was a bit brighter but I probably won't.
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