Box-Ironbark forests near Chiltern, NE Victoria

The Chiltern Mt Pilot National Park, in central north eastern Victoria, displays the remnants of the Box-Ironbark forests which dominated this area before the English saws and axes arrived.

Over 2000 years ago, an artist painted with red ochre this image of a thylacine (tasmanian tiger). It is extraordinary that it could still be visible – if only just.

The canopy is very high in the rejuvenated forests, the last bushfire was only a few years ago, and the birds were about but generally right up there.

I didn’t see the rare Regent Honey-eater, but did see a few White-naped ones

There were several Robin families, with the Scarlet Robin (the crimson chest is less complete than for the Flame Robin) and the Eastern Yellow Robin:

There were several Brown Tree-Creepers, confusing the issue by creeping across the forest floor, rather than up a tree. I have not seem them so closely before. This looks like a non-breeding male; unusually in this species, the female is more colourfully striking than the male.

I saw several parrots which I have not seen before, but they were all too quick for the camera.They looked like Turquoise Parrots.

Definitely my first sighting was of a Crested Shrike-Tit. It had clearly been to cockatoo school to learn how to attack bark

Other things of interest in the area include the memorial to Major Thomas Mitchell who, unlike many ignorant European explorers, didn’t actually “pass” here, but went past here; and the Chiltern Golf Course, which seems to  have, from accounts of a number of other observant travellers, a wise policy of ensuring no actual golfers ever harm the well manicured course.

Michael Monaghan

June 2019