Wildlife in December

by Keren Cox-Witton

Walking along Misty Lane in the early evening I had stopped to watch a roo family when a dark grey blob with a white flash caught my eye. A rock with bird poo?, I thought. But I got out the binoculars and as I looked, it stood up, and turned into a large white-necked heron feeding in the grass.

Now, echidnas are sometimes spotted from Misty Lane but we have rarely seen them on BREP. On our way for a weed we met one in the old orchard, loping along and industriously digging, not overly concerned by us humans.

Wombats were spotted at night heading into the swamp by Cabin 3, during the day heading unconcernedly across Cabin Paddock, and we surprised one coming out of its burrow on Misty lane

so it turned around and went back in again.

The birds also didn’t disappoint with bower birds, lyrebirds, grey strike-thrush, kookas, currawongs, firetails, robins and that’s just the start. A special treat at the Barren Grounds were yellow-tailed and glossy black cockatoos. Along with the wildflowers, that made for a wonderful Griffith Trail loop.

Cicadas were in abundance, their raucous calls deafening us and empty shells EVERYWHERE. In Marie’s Glade we watched them emerging from their old skin, their pink stumps slowly unfurling into fresh translucent wings. At the Cabin 2 BBQ, a wombat had knocked over the log seat to reveal a lot of shells all lined up underneath.

The microbats emerged at dusk as usual, chattering and scrabbling as they got ready to start their nightly foraging flight.

We foraged ourselves in the vege garden and found some contributions to our dinners, to round off our days of walking and wildlife watching.