BIBY TV's video: Celebrating Autumn Mellow mix of amazing birds in the Capertee Valley

Winter is here and BIBY TV is busy collecting and collating footage for our next medley of birdlife in the Capertee Valley (NSW). Every season brings abundant birdy moments gleaned from just a few visits to this geological wonder. No wonder it’s considered to be one of the best bird-watching areas in Australia and the world. What’s particularly exciting is that the filming location within this valley was once largely bare paddocks, Over two decades of habitat restoration has created a wonderful home for many bird species, including several that are listed as “vulnerable” or are uncommon and declining elsewhere. While tree-planting is the most obvious change to the 140 acre property, shrubs (large and small) also provide crucial habitat, as do many native grasses and other ground-hugging plants. The site also has a bird-conducive balance of open forest, woodland, revegetated areas of different stages and grassy open zones, with various water sources and retained timber debris, both standing and fallen. The result? You can see for yourself in this glorious summary of autumn and our previous instalments, Celebrating Spring... https://youtu.be/rSthqFL2IUg and Celebrating Summer... https://youtu.be/T5LI5HpVRTc Again we are only presenting around half of the species noted across the season. As well as the 33 shown (and sometimes heard) here, others can be detected in the soundscape throughout the video (e.g. Australian Raven, Pied Butcherbird, Little Corella, Australian King Parrot, Red Wattlebird, Spotted Pardalote, Australian Magpie, Restless Flycatcher, White-plumed Honeyeater and Black-faced Cuckoo-shrike). Some birds are a feature of summer and early autumn, but then disappear entirely by April (e.g. Rainbow Bee-eater, White-winged Triller and Fairy Martin ). Indeed, the very different conditions and bird mix across March-May 2019 adds to the argument that the traditional four seasons of three months each may be ill-suited to many parts of Australia. Nonetheless, autumn was memorable for swathes of tall seeding grasses, grasshoppers galore and related feasting by (seed-eating) finch species and (insectivorous) cuckoo-shrikes, amongst many others. Exceptional January rain and a March top-up helped generate a time of plenty, despite a particularly hot summer in the valley. Like summer, the pace of life was more relaxed than the prime breeding season of spring. But the vibe seemed even more laid-back as nesting/family-raising was now over for a while for most (if not all) birds, with many juvenile/immature birds fending for themselves and then dispersing. (The parent and juvenile Dusky Woodswallow on a post together was filmed in early March.) We observed the offspring of several species, but will just list the youngsters who appear in this video: Diamond Firetail, Turquoise Parrot, Dusky Woodswallow, Rainbow Bee-eater, Rufous Songlark, Willie Wagtail, Grey Shrike-thrush, Rufous Whistler, Eastern Spinebill, Welcome Swallow and Tree Martin. Given the fast maturation time of finch species it’s also likely that some adult-looking birds are just reaching that stage after hatching early in the breeding season (e.g. Zebra Finch and Double-barred Finch). For more information on any of the species shown here go to http://www.birdsinbackyards.net/finder using the names as labelled.