Yanchep National Park

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The next day, I did another fairly significant bit of birding, which was a visit to Yanchep National Park, an hour and a bit north of Perth. The main purpose of this day trip wasn’t actually for birding, but we were going there anyway to celebrate my grandmother’s birthday in the nice restaurant at Yanchep that overlooks the lake, but I got lots of birding in anyway. There were a few species that I was particularly looking for at Yanchep, including things like White-winged Fairy-wren, Southern Emu-wren, Purple-crowned Lorikeet, Elegant Parrot, and things like that. I didn’t actually see any of those four species though, and I think that would largely be because we were at the national park at a fairly poor time for birding (got there after the morning, and left before the evening) and I felt I didn’t have long enough there to properly look for stuff. I did manage to see several new species nonetheless.

On the way to Yanchep, we stopped at a place called Joondalup which is a town to the north of Perth. Though with the ridiculous amount of urban sprawl that has happened, and continues to happen, it has become more of a suburb on the northern edge of the city of Perth. At Joondalup, there is an absolutely huge lake called, imaginatively, Lake Joondalup, and we stopped here for a while. Around the lake there is a parkland-type environment, and the trees were absolutely packed with hundreds of Long-billed Corellas. Most of the birds around the lake were typical common parkland birds, and the birds on the lake itself were fairly common waterfowl too. I did however enjoy watching a Musk Duck swim around underwater just in front of me on a viewing platform, and the water was shallow and clear enough to see it dig about in the mud.

As well as the typical waterfowl of a suburban park (Pacific Black, Australia Wood, Dusky Moorhen, Eurasian Coot, Australian Shelduck, etc.) there were also some feral domestic ducks and geese, which I guess were released former pets.

After a quick stop and picnic at Lake Joondalup, we continued on to Yanchep. For this second half of the journey, we were properly out of Perth now, so I was keenly looking out for wildlife out of the window, particularly for Emus which are found around here. Though I didn’t see any Emus, I did see a Whistling Kite soaring overhead, which was cool, as it was a new species for me. We soon arrived at Yanchep National Park, and parked by the restaurant allowing those who wanted to sit there and enjoy the view do so, and those who wanted to go off exploring to do so too. Before I headed off to explore though, I looked at the various birds in the trees above the car park which included Red Wattlebirds and various honeyeaters, but most interestingly, amongst these honeyeaters were a few Tawny-crowned Honeyeaters, which were a lifer.

Despite being winter, it was actually quite hot, and I think that restricted bird activity. To start with, I did a loop around the lake. At Yanchep there is quite a large lake, though it is very shallow and with extensive areas of marshy land, and a nice path going around that becomes a boardwalk when necessary. The animals that were immediately noticeable were the many pobblebonks. You may know these better as Western Banjo Frogs, however the onomatopoeic name 'pobblebonk' portrays the sound very well which was extremely loud and could be heard constantly throughout the time I was walking around the lake. Though I did spend quite a while looking for the frogs themselves, I didn’t see any at all.

I also didn’t see, or even hear, very many birds. There was the occasional call from a small bird up in a tree, but they all stopped before I could track them down and it felt pretty dead. Even on the lake, all I could see were a couple of Pacific Black Ducks and a lone egret wandering around in the reeds. By the time I was about half way around the lake, I heard a very interesting and distinctive call that carried loudly around the forest. It took a few minutes, but eventually I tracked it down to a largeish bird on a branch about halfway up a tree, sitting in a very typical cuckoo pose with wings hanging down. Upon getting my binoculars on to it, it was obviously a Fan-tailed Cuckoo, and I was able to follow it for a while as it went from tree to tree.

Though this wasn’t a new addition for the trip since I had seen several in Lamington National Park, it was new for the WA list. I enjoyed that sighting very much, and it was in totally different surroundings to Lamington National Park, and did look quite different as well. I had been following this cuckoo for a little while when I noticed a couple of Western Wattlebirds high on a bare tree.

Though I’d seen the species I few times, this was actually my first opportunity to get a picture. Just after I had taken that picture, I noticed something fly off from a nearby exposed branch. I only got a flash of colour and a vague shape, but my first instinct was a kingfisher. My best bet as to what it was is a Red-backed Kingfisher which would be a new species for me. I didn’t see it well enough to be sure though, so it can’t go on the list, but that definitely seems the most likely candidate for an ID because of the shape, size, and flash or blue, red, and white that I saw. I may have counted it if it was only a year list, but since Red-backed Kingfisher would be a lifer, I’m leaving that as unidentified. I did attempt to track it down, but it was gone. During this time, I had lost the cuckoo too, but at least I did get a nice view of that, and finally managed an acceptable picture of the Western Wattlebird.

So we continued around the lake, and it wasn’t long before I spotted a group of Fairy-wrens hopping about in the undergrowth. Three species are possible at Yachep – Splendid, Variegated, and White-winged. The latter would have been a lifer, and was a species I particularly wanted to see because I do like Fairy-wrens very much, but there was no doubt about the ID when a full-colour male showed up, and it was obviously a Splendid.

Though I’ve seen them many times now, they still shock me with their colour. We watched them for a while before they disappeared off into the undergrowth. As we continued around to the side of the lake where I could only see an egret at first, a few more birds started to appear. There were quite a few coots, moorhens, and Purple Swamphens, as well as plenty of Pacific Black Ducks, and Australian Shelducks. There were also loads of Silvereyes around, as well as Welcome Swallows flying over the lake, and more interestingly than the swallows were Black-faced Woodswallows that were also flying around. On the lake were a few small islands that I had seen in the distance from the other side, and now that I could see them closer, it turned out that as well as the clumps of vegetation, they also had Grey Teals and Pied Stilts resting on them.

After this walk, we went for lunch in the restaurant that overlooks the lake. On the lawn in front of the restaurant were a few Western Grey Kangaroos lounging about, and in the restaurant itself (not actually inside the building) were lots of birds trying to steal food. They seemed to be most keen on chips, and would descend on a table for leftovers as soon as people had left, and they were even bold enough to fly onto tables while people were still eating! The species doing this were Australian Magpies, Laughing Kookaburras, Red Wattlebirds, and most prominently, a few dozen Australian Ringnecks. The other interesting thing seen from the restaurant were very large numbers of Carnaby’s White-tailed Black-cockatoos flying around overhead, and landing in trees around this area. From what I’ve read it seems to be guaranteed to see loads of Carnaby’s Cockatoos around the restaurant area at Yanchep.

After lunch, we planned to do another bush walk, though first I wanted to check out the Yanchep National Park Koala Enclosure. This is an area with many large trees that has been fenced off, and had a boardwalk for visitors, and a few koala feeding areas built, and has had probably a dozen or so Southern Koalas in it.

The enclosure was pretty nice, quite natural with lots of nice trees, and plenty of space for the koalas. It just seemed a bit odd that they had built a random enclosure for koalas though, as they are obviously not native to Western Australia and had no particular reason to be here, other than as a tourist attraction. I did think there was some unused potential though, because on the ground beneath the trees for the Koalas was quite a large fenced off area that was actually divided into a few separate sections so I thought they easily had the potential to have a few species on the ground there, like Perth Zoo had with Western Brush-wallabies in their Koala enclosure, and to add a little bit more than just koalas. There was lots of educational signage though, and it was a very nice enclosure. (I have posted a few further pictures of this in the Australia – Other Gallery starting from this page).

We also briefly popped into the visitor centre and gift shop to look into visiting the limestone caves at Yanchep National Park. They turned out to be only viewable with tours that were too expensive and at inconvenient times, so instead we decided to do a walking loop through the dry bush away from the lake. Also of interest in the visitor centre were taxidermied Echidna, Koala, and Carnaby’s Cockatoo.

We chose the walking trail with the picture of the Echidna on it because I fancied seeing an Echidna, and it was about an appropriate length. We didn’t actually find an Echidna, but there were a few interesting birds around. I had a repeat experience from earlier with hearing the call of Fan-tailed Cuckoo and tracking it down, though it was higher up in a further away tree this time, and didn’t show for as long. I heard the same cuckoo call twice more on that walk, so they must have been fairly numerous. The other thing that I tracked down by their call were a group of Black-faced Cuckooshrikes flying amongst the trees, and I loved watching them rearrange their wings as they landed on the branches by flicking each wing up and down in turn in a slightly comical way. I also spent a bit of time trying to get a good picture of one, and I was somewhat successful, though not as much as I would have liked.

There was one further bird of particular interest from this walk, and that was a smallish group of Yellow-throated Miners that flew into a tree, stopped long enough to allow me to get a proper look with my binoculars, and then flew off again, and this was a lifer. The two birds that I was particularly hoping for during this walk didn’t appear sadly, and those were Southern Emu-wren and White-winged Fairy-wren. Oh well, I’ll have to try again for those another time. By the time we had finished that particular walk, it was getting towards time to start heading back, but first we walked through a patch of bushland around the back of the Koala Exhibit that had several Western Grey Kangaroos lying around in the bushes. There was also a fairly small and nondescript bird flitting about that turned out to be a Jacky Winter, another lifer. Though I didn’t get to hear it give its call that gives it its name.

We then left the national park and started to head back to Perth. During the drive until we got back into the city, I was looking out for wildlife, and still hoping to find some Emus. Though I didn’t see any Emus, there were a couple of interesting bird sightings. The first was a very large group – probably a couple of dozen – of woodswallows roosting together on an electric wire, and the second was on one of the posts holding up the wire, not too much further down the road actually, was a Black-shouldered Kite sitting prominently. I had seen the Black-winged Kite before in Kenya earlier in the year in February, however the confusingly similarly named Black-shouldered Kite was a new species for me. And that was the final thing of interest on my visit to Yanchep, so although the main focus was not birding, and I didn’t have very long at Yanchep National Park, I had managed to see a few interesting things. I think Yanchep National Park is probably worth revisiting next time I'm in Perth, and since there is accommodation there, it may even be worth staying the night to have a better chance of seeing even more interesting birds.


New birds seen:

Whistling Kite
Tawny-crowned Honeyeater
Black-faced Woodswallow
Yellow-throated Miner
Jacky Winter
Black-shouldered Kite

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