My friend Don suggested a walk to visit Birdwood Gully at Springwood. I hadn’t seen Don for a while and was keen to catch up, and Birdwood Gully is always a nice place to visit. So I travelled to Springwood and met Don near the station, and we set off for the track from Boland Avenue.
This track took us down to Madoline Glen. Madoline was the daughter of Thomas Boland, and early resident of Springwood. But a short way down the track is another bit of history, that Don was not aware of. This is a memorial inscription chiseled into a rock wall near the track.
The inscription reads something like –
In memory of my Dog Paddy 1917 A true pal R Scott
I have talked about the history of this series of inscriptions in my blog post on the history of Sassafras Gully at Springwood.
We continued down the track. We were looking up for birds, and we noticed this impressive Staghorn –
We also saw this Brown Gerygone –
And we also saw quite a few orchids. This one is probably Acianthus fornicatus –
And at one spot there were a lot of Greenhood Orchids. Most were Pterostylis nutans.
These may be different species –
Some more birds –
Eastern Spinebill
Eastern Yellow Robin
Don spotted some of these orchids growing on a tree –
Powerful Owl
I was on the lookout for the Powerful Owl that I had seen in Birdwood Gully on my visit on 27 May 2022. At one place, we saw some “whitewash” at the base of a tree. So we looked up. We could not see a Powerful Owl, so we looked in nearby trees. We eventually spotted a Powerful owl perched a long way up a tree.
The Powerful Owl was clutching a Ring-tailed Possum. The Owl must have heard us, as it looked down.
It soon started to doze off.
We then had a good look at the original tree where we had seen the signs of a Powerful Owl. Through his binoculars, Don spotted a hollow. Perhaps it is a nesting hollow? If so, the second Powerful Owl may be inside sitting on eggs.
Yellow-throated Scrubwren
Eastern Spinebill
Brown Thornbill
I had been hoping that some late season fungi may be out – but I found very little.
This was a slow bushwalk – we spent our time looking carefully for interesting things and this made for a very interesting and rewarding visit.