July 2022 Bird Report

I'm afraid this report will be pretty brief as I have a revolting cold and will be returning to my bed asap!

Note also: After my initial post I  found out there was a Pelagic from Eden into Victorian waters on 30 July.  That led me to check eBird again and I added 8 species to the July list and 3 to the all-time Mallacoota District List.  They are highlighted in yellow on the Google Sheet.
There may be a second trip on 31 July so more goodies my be delivered

A pretty good report for July, which is usually the quietest month for birds.  We totalled 127 species for the month which is a high 72.6% of species ever seen in the month (the highest managed for any month).  This was 7 species more than July 2022, and there may be other species lurking in eBird for this year which I have not yet found (because eBird - unlike Birdata - does not allow extraction of data from custom areas).

 

Picking Bird of the Month was quite easy.  A Brown Cuckoo-Dove was seen at Gipsy Point and attracted a lot of attention by birders.  A big “Thank you” to the residents of Gipsy Point who were very helpful in assisting folk to find the bird in their yards!  (If only this observer had been able to spot the beast.)  It’s the second year in a row it has been seen here at this time of year.

Close behind was a report of a Lewin's Rail in a swampy area near the Broome St boardwalk.  This is not far from Fisheries Jetty where I saw the species in 2021.  There have now been 5 sightings of the species in the District and an expert has suggested that they may be much more common than thought but their habit of lurking in dense marshy vegetation means they are rarely seen.

A full list of species seen in the month is here.

The next chart shows the distribution of species across broad categories.