Central Victoria – Newstead

One of the main reasons for the trip to Central Victoria was to visit the Newstead area and have a look for Bee-eaters. I have heard that they are breeding at the cemetery in a nearby creek bed. They burrow into the side of sandy cliffs.  On the day I visited I could hear quite a few calling from the paddocks across the road and in the creek bed running through the nearby farm land (sheep grazing). Only a small section of the creek is accessible from the cemetery so I sat down and watched for a while to see whether some of the bee-eaters hawking over the paddocks would return to the nesting holes I could see from my vantage point.

Rainbow Bee-eater

Rainbow Bee-eater II – the bee-eater would land on a perch opposite the burrow and check for danger and anything showing any interest.

Rainbow Bee-eater III – I did not notice until I processed the images that there was a second bird on the wire

Rainbow Bee-eater nesting burrow – very small hole that the bee-eater would fly full speed into to deliver food for the chicks…

Another colourful bird at the cemetery was a Striated Pardalote.

Striated Pardalote

Striated Pardalote II

On the way back to Daylesford I stopped in at the Newstead Rotunda Park – it is a small neglected park that seems to have many small birds including Thornbills, Silvereyes, Red Browed Finches, Fantails and a colony of White Browed Babblers. I found a group of Red-Browed Finches building several large nests in a dense spiky shrub.

Red Browed Finch with a piece of nesting material checking that it is safe to return to the nest site

Red Browed Finch at the nest

Red Browed Finch Lookout