Bunyip State Park Vertebrate List

– NOTE – Bunyip State Park obviously suffered severe damage from Bushfire early in 2019 – it will be interesting to follow its recovery over the coming years.

Bunyip State Park has long been my favourite wildlife destination close to Melbourne. It is on the right side of town for me, has great habitat diversity and an excellent range of wildlife ranging from heathland specials like Southern Emu-wren and Beautiful Firetail to tall wet forest species like Greater and Yellow-bellied Glider and of course an very good population of Sooty Owl. There is an excellent reasonably maintained set of forest roads and a large network of walking tracks. Nearly half the park was heavily burnt in the Black Saturday fires but even the regrowth is well worth a look with species like Pilotbird, Long-nosed Bandicoot and Dusky Antechinus moving back in.

As the place if of such interest to me I decided to compile a list of vertebrate species recorded in the park. As well as personal observations I used sources including Atlas of Living Australia, Ebird, Birdata, Victorian Biodiversity Atlas and internet research. In addition I advertised on a number of social media platforms asking for sightings and received a number of responses. The intention is that the below table is a working document that can be added to overtime. There are a number of single records that are possibly mis-identifications of other more common species but have been included for completeness – a good example of this is Geocrinia laevis which is almost certainly a mis-identification of the ubiquitous Geocrinia victoriana. Sightings from some sources such as Ebird may include species seen outside the park boundaries. Initial work indicates around 245 species recorded in the park made of of 174 birds, 44 mammals, 20 reptiles and 9 frogs. There are a number of interesting species that have not been recorded since the 80’s – they may well be gone but I live in hope. If you think you have an addition to the list please contact me! My latest edition was Peron’s Tree Frog on the very northern border adjacent to farmland.

For the record in the State Park I have recorded 141/172 bird species, 36/44 mammal species, 10/20 reptile species and 9/9 frog species – I really need to work on my reptiles!

Sources:
Atlas of Living Australia
Victorian Biodiversity Atlas
Ebird
Birdata
VNPA camera trap project
Personal Comment: Tim Bawden, Arthur Carew, Steve Davidson, Dave Newman, Steven Kuiter, Richard Loyn