In 1977, A Forest Kingfisher vagrated to Warrandyte south. This was the first record of the bird in Victoria- it was a local celebrity for the 2-odd months it stayed, and was twitched extensively. Their regular range peters out just south of Port Macquarie, and are even very rare between there and Sydney.
It wasn’t until almost 50 years later- May 22, 2025- that a bird would show up in the state again. It was found by an unassuming birder named Susan Kruss while driving through the Otways. She assumed it must’ve been an out-of-season sacred kingfisher, took a photo, and drove on.
Then George Appleby reposted it on Birdline VIC.
Every twitcher in a two-light-year radius tried to get onto this bird, but the bird was never seen again despite intense effort, including searching by my friend Chanith Wijeratne. Susan had unknowingly secured the ultimate blocker, or so everyone thought…
Meanwhile, the Bar-shouldered Dove at Mount Korong (a 5th record for Victoria as far as I am aware) near Wedderburn, continued to evade most birders that tried to see it, including Dad and me when we were there on the 24th of May.
Nobody expected what would happen a year later.
On the 29th of April, while twitching the East Gippsland Pectoral Sandpiper and Long-toed Stint at the Macleod Morass Wildlife Reserve in Bairnsdale, Dan Pendavingh bumped into yet another Forest Kingfisher and probably couldn’t believe his eyes.
Instantly, the locals were on the search- the rest of the state on the edge of their seats. It was thought to be a bird on the move until H Stewart refound the bird the next day, confirming that the bird would maybe stay for a little longer.
And the next day, Friday 1st of May, the first wave of twitchers made their way east, including myself. I got up at 5am and spent the next 6 hours on the train to Bairnsdale. I was greeted by Rob Clay, who had found the bird earlier this morning, about 1.5 hours prior. After a long multi-hour multi-person search, Robert Anderson found the bird just after a bunch of birders left for lunch at around 2pm, giving Benedick Furniss, him and me jaw-droppingly good views. A beautiful kingfisher, with immediately obvious large loral spots, a clean white belly and vibrant sapphire to light blue colouration as opposed to the sea green-blue of an out-of-season sacred kingfisher. The bird was moving between the big dead tree before the boardwalk out into the wetland and adjacent trees. It stuck around for around 10-15 minutes and then disappeared and was not seen again for the rest of the day. What this Forest Kingfisher is doing here is anyone’s guess.
Benedick Furniss and Robert Anderson offered me a ride to the Magpie goose spot, but I was too locked in trying to find my lifer Long-toed Stint- a bit of visual hybrid between a Red-necked Stint and a Pectoral Sandpiper. After hours of searching the whole wetland, I eventually found the bird in my stabilized scope.
It was a great day, I was already catching the train home when I got word of the second mega East Gippsland had on offer-
Another Bar-shouldered Dove. This one was found by a local named Geraldine, living in the tiny fishing village of Tamboon, gouging itself on the bird feeder of 10 Banksia Gully Rd.
4am, Sunday the 3rd of May, I’m out of bed and packing to go straight back to Barinsdale, this time with my friend Samanta Diggines. The buses from my house to the station don’t even run that early, so I flew down the hill on Annie’s bike to Lilydale Station. The day before, the 2nd of May, I had spent celebrating my sister’s 17th birthday and hanging out with a bunch of mates in the city- so it all worked out. Chanith Wijeratne, who is doing his State Big Year, also got onto the Kingfisher and the Dove with Kaden Porter and Grace Lewis that day.
The driver of the bus that connects Ringwood to Dandenong Station (the 901) refused to let me bring my sister’s bike on board, despite it being 5am and a total of 4 other people using the bus. I’d never had any problems with bikes on buses in the early hours before that point. He was right though, and I knew I was stretching my luck with the rules here. Luckily I had the only bike lock and chain our family owns on me, so had to chain it to the light post at the bus stop in a scramble before I got on…
Samantha met me at Cardinia Road Station, and we sent it back to Bairnsdale. After a pre-calculated iced coffee and pie combo purchase at a servo, I crashed in a heap and woke up after an energising hour nap. Samantha is a very smooth driver when needed! She may have tried to string a butcherbird on a powerline into a kingfisher at one point on our way, worth checking though. On the last leg of the trip, Mitch and Chanith reached out to us with some dire news- Mitch, who had tried to twitch the dove in Tamboon had had the cops called on him for simply looking in from a public road into the bird feeder- apparently, the original reporter didn’t inform the owners of the house about the BSD, and the residents of 10 banksia gully road decided to call the cops on poor Mitch instead of just going out and talking to him! He had his car searched and everything, and was nearly arrested. And of course, despite the extra 5 hours of driving and hours of staking out, he dipped… Understandably, Samantha lost her enthusiasm for the drive to Tamboon.
The last 5 minutes to the ‘Morass were tense. We got out of the car and ran to meet the 5 or so other birders who had the bird in view- I was still scrambling for my binoculars while Samantha waited exasperatedly. Luckily, my life was saved by the birders who gave her the directions of where it was in the tree, and she got her lifer shots just before it flew off.
I got to meet the talented photographer Robyn Cuzens, who took a great interest in my Oscar6, and was lucky to say hi again to Kevin Nguyen who I last saw at Stockyard Point a while back, and chat to Nick Goode, one of my favourite blokes on the Vic birding scene.
We all were looking for the Long-toed Stint, though it took a while to find. When I did, I called everyone back, Nick set up his scope, so everyone got a look. News of Mitch’s fate with the Bar-shouldered Dove spread, and nobody was keen on driving another 2.5 hours to have the police called on them after dipping, so I started thinking of a new plan.
On the way out, the Forest Kingfisher reappeared, and I got my second time getting great views of the bird. Nick and I also saw the same Azure Kingfisher nearby that I had seen on Friday.
We all tried (and failed) to find the late-staying Topknot pigeons near Pound Swamp that had been reported before splitting ways. Mitch was still on his way back from Tamboon. Samanta and I met up with him at the Lindenow Pub, where Samantha and I got lunch. (Great food and really friendly staff, by the way, 5 stars!) We grouped up and headed into Mitchel River National Park looking for Spotted Quail-thrush, a would-be lifer for Mitch and Samantha, though it was raining, so we quickly gave up.
In the hotel, I had called Rob Clay about the BSD- he already had it from the 2022 East Gippsland Bird- but knew his friend Robert Wright would be very interested, so I reached out to him.
Robert Wright is the #2 birder for East Gippsland and is a really awesome bloke. I gave him a ring and he said he’d love to take me with him, but I’d need to meet him in Bairnsdale at 5:45am the next morning. I wasn’t originally planning on staying on Monday. Mitch offered me his swag to use before we parted ways, and Samantha dropped me back off at the west end of the Mitchel River walk. Later in his swag, I cancelled/reorganised my Monday commitments. All the pieces were in place.
The evening consisted of me desperately trying to figure out a place I could use the bathroom. In a moment of ultimate embarrassment, I had to doorknock a random stranger and ask if I could use their toilet… Thank goodness for kind strangers, as confused as they may be about this strange young man.
I used sticks to prop up the swag so that the mozzies couldn’t suck me through the mesh. Then it started raining a fair bit, and I had to put the material over anyway. Suddenly remembering the precarious situation Annie’s bike was in back in Ringwood, so called my other sister’s friend who lives in Ringwood and asked if she or her dad would be able to rescue the bike from the 901 bus stop. I gave them the code, and her Dad legendarily saved the day.
I realised as I was packing my stuff up at 5:30 the next morning that I left my jumper outside like a spud, to the surprise of no one, it was saturated.
Robert Wright picked me up, and we sent it straight to Tamboon. Robert is a really lovely guy and is deeply embedded in the conservation world. He lives on Raymond Island, and has been a key player in revegetating the island, planting thousands of plants and being involved in the protection of its Critically Endangered microendemic Spider Orchid. They also get good numbers of Swift Parrots on the island at the start and end of the season. He regularly fights developments threatening significant habitat.
I dozed off and woke up in Cann River. The rest of the drive to Tamboon, we picked up a Brush Bronzewing, plenty of Lyrebirds, and a small family of Brown Quail at the old White-cheeked Honeyeater spot, among other things.
Rocking up in Tamboon, we had a walk around the village to see where the Dove might be. After admiring a beautiful adult white-bellied sea eagle that flew over us, we went and chatted to some of the locals and made friends with them. When I mentioned the bird and Geraldine to them, they rolled their eyes and said she had caused a bit of a problem- Mitch had clearly earned a bad name in the community, so I did the best I could to clear his name. He had honestly done nothing wrong. Luckily for us, the inhabitants of 10 Banksia Gully Road were not present. It sounds like they’re aggressive to binocular-wielding people. On our way to the next door neighbors house (who also feed the birds) to see if the dove would be on their lawn- instead, while completing another quick scan of 10 Banksia, I SAW the bird for a brief second before it went behind a crest in the lawn- I ran to get Robert’s attention and after a bit of patience it showed itself again, giving great clear views! We were stoked. We went straight back to our new friends to show them- the friendly next-door neighbours were also interested- but the bird was nowhere to be found. The village had been a bushfire haven for wildlife during the 2019-20 fires, and they have done a really good job with putting up nest boxes and providing water for the birds, and a lot have stayed ever since.
Robert and I gave a warm goodbye and headed off back to Bairnsdale, stopping to bird along the way. Mitch was understandably gripped by the news that we had found the dove, and I felt really bad- he had really been through crap with this one. So I’ve decided to do something to make up for it.
Robert and I had a couple of nice walks through both the Cann River Rainforest and the McKenzie River Rainforest, then spent a couple of hours searching around the Mount Raymond Regional Park for Glossy Black-Cockatoos amongst the abundant Allocasuarina, a genus of medium-sized trees that grow in nutrient-poor soils and produce the seed pods that they are dependent on for food. It took lots of patience, but eventually, after an hour and a half of careful scanning, we located a single pair of the beautiful cockatoos. Their call is a soft, wavering, creaking noise when idle, louder when in flight. The males have pure red tail feathers bordered by black above and below, and glossy brown/black body feathers. The females show beautiful haphazard patches of yellow throughout the head, the tail feathers flashing intricate patterns of red, orange, yellow and black, reminiscent of flames from a fire. The mosquitoes that I had avoided last night found me here, I kid you not, this was the most mosquitoes I have ever seen in my life. Slapping them away would’ve scared away the cockatoos, so I sacrificed my face, arms, ears, neck, fingers and hands to the horde as I got my digiscope shots through my Oscar6 and admired the birds for a good 20 minutes. My highly accurate scientific methods lead me to believe I had lost around 39.2% of my blood mass. Worth it. Nearby, a Rose Robin was calling.
On our way out, the track degraded even more; there were some pretty severe washouts. The creek I didn’t realise was nearby explained both the birds’ water source and the mosquitoes. There’s no way a 2WD would have made it in here safely. While talking to Robert about the new QLD Night Parrot population discovery, I cut myself off to gawk out the passenger window; the only word that would come out of my mouth was “MORE!” “MORE!” “MORE!” It took one very confused Robert a second or two to figure out what was going on until his eyes locked onto the same thing I was looking at- yet ANOTHER pair of Glossies. This pair gave us a magnificent low flyover when we stopped the car.
What a day!
We had a look around Orbost for White-headed Pigeons. We dipped, but had a really nice time watching some Azure Kingfishers fishing in the river, and some playful fantails, thornbills and yellow robins having a splash and clean in a puddle. The last incidentals were my emu and rock dove East Gippsland ticks.
The last stop of the day was at East Gippsland’s best Latham’s Snipe spot, the Bairnsdale Aquatic & Recreational Centre Swamp. In season, you get well over 100 snipe here. Understandably, the marshy ground through the open woodland down to the swamp looks great for them. It’s May, though, so the Snipe have left. The reason we had come was not for the snipe but for the Magpie Geese that had made their home here for a while, a significantly rare bird for east Gippsland and one you just don’t get to see very often in Victoria. We got distant but good looks at a bird perched in a dead tree with some ibis, and one in the swamp.
After that, it was time to go back home.
Nobody expected the Forest Kingfisher+Bar-shouldered Dove combo two years in a row, but here we are. We were just better this time.