Found in the Wombat Forest every summer, the pretty little rose robin cannot be as reliably found elsewhere in the Ballarat region. Further afield it occurs in the thicker parts of the Mt Cole forest.
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From spring through until late summer it inhabits the Wombat’s denser gullies and creeklines where an understorey of blackwood grows.
We were pleased to find a couple of rose robins at Blackwood last weekend. They occur in suitable spots all through the Wombat Forest, westward to at least Spargo Creek.
A small and slender little bird, the rose robin’s main feature is its rosy-pink breast. It is white below the breast, while the head, back and tail are dark grey. The tail is longer than those of other robins, and the bird is more of a mid-storey dweller, very rarely coming to ground, unlike the rather similar but scarcer pink robin.
With its long tail and its active habits among the branches, the rose robin might at first glance be confused with the grey fantail.
The male’s breast colour identifies him immediately, but the female lacks the rosy breast and is basically grey. Both sexes have white tail-sides.
The male’s song is a distinctive short trilling one, mostly heard in the blackwood understorey before its maker is seen.
Birdwatchers go to the Wombat Forest each summer to see it, as well as other birds such as gang-gang cockatoos, red-browed treecreepers, olive whistlers and rufous fantails.
On some previous visits we have seen king parrots at Blackwood, but we missed them recently. Numbers there are small, and the birds appear to be confined to the township area. There is some question as to whether king parrots in Blackwood are truly indigenous, or whether the small population has established from aviary escapees.
The Wombat Forest is at its best from late spring and is a welcome spot for a visit in the heat of summer, especially if birds such as rose robins and rufous fantails are discovered. The damper, thicker-vegetated gullies are the better spots for birds.
MAGPIE GEESE
A pair of magpie geese at Mullawallah Wetlands (Winter Swamp) were a surprise in mid-January.
Feeding belly-deep in thick aquatic vegetation, they appeared to be immature birds, without the adults’ prominent knob on the top of the head.
There have been magpie geese at Lake Wendouree for more than a year now, so the two at Mullawallah may have come from there.
As they fed among the bright green plants, they looked very much as they would in wetlands of northern Australia.