Month: March 2017

I have been terrible at blog posts this year. Every time I get started on a post I get distracted and never get back to it. And it is not for lack of good material! This year I have had some great experiences including Shepherd’s Beaked Whale, Eastern Quolls and more than my fair share of owls. So in the interest of getting back into the blogging business for 2017 I will start with a few Masked Owl seen in East Gippsland during January. As is my want during the Christmas break I had headed down to the Marlo area for a spot of owling with Jono Dashper and Owen Lishmund. During the daylight hours we had some pretty good birding with species like Ground Parrot at Marlo and Conran, scads of Emu-wrens, Wedge-tailed Shearwaters off the Cape and the usual suite of wet forest specialists. I particularly like heading east and encountering Black-faced Monarchs in every gully because to me they hint at a more tropical flavour further north – one of my favourite birds and we saw and heard plenty on this trip.

Eventually we found our way to my favourite owling site near Conran where yet again the Crescent Honeyeaters “egypted” on dusk before the White-throated Nightjars fired up. A Masked Owl screamed but it was soon drowned out by a lovely pair of Sooty Owl trilling which gave good if distant views. Something rather special about seeing two Sooties in the one binocular view in the fading light…. We potted around the area finding a number of frogs including some nice Paracrinia haswelli before heading further afield. Ducking down some dirt tracks we found a nice open area of heathland where right on midnight we had a rather lovely Masked Owl come and visit, cackling around our heads like a demented seagull. This was a lovely pale bird which looked like a ghost hovering well above us at the limit of the torch beam. It did not perch but was a nice lifer for Jono and Owen. Further up the track we encountered another individual which gave us great views as it perched reasonably close by.

We continued on and somewhere well north of Bemm River we encountered a third Masked Owl. This individual is not done justice my bad pictures but in the binocular view had a gorgeous grey tone on its facial disk like no other I had seen before. Unfortunately it did not get close enough for good pics but I will be back. Sooty Owls and Yellow-bellied Gliders at Cabbage Tree and a fat Long-nosed Bandicoot rounded out an excellent night.