Our first stop on our quest for the red-tails was Johnsons Road, where the Red-tailed Black Cockatoos had been seen only recently. No luck here. We saw Galahs and Corellas. These have increased in numbers since more grain crops have been sown in the area.

We proceed along Schinkel Road where seed lucerne crops were growing, irrigated by centre-pivots. Beehives provided bees for the pollination of lucerne flowers. We drove through Kybybolite and then into Mullinger Road to Mullinger Swamp Conservation Park. Here we saw the largest red gum in the south-east, 17 metres in circumference and 35 metres tall. There were dead trees in the swamp. Some say that they died 300 years ago in a drought. No sign of water here. In the last century, it was first dry in 1967.

We then travelled to Darryl Cother’s property Benyeo, where Chinese miners travelling from Robe to the Goldfields in Victoria helped build the homestead and woolshed, using ironstone mined in the property. The original property was 18,000 ha. Darryl’s ancestors were given a soldier settlement block of 800 ha after the first world war for about 3500 pounds. We visited a runaway hole or sink hole where in a wet period the ground subsided, allowing enormous quantities of water to disappear into the underground. Birds seen here included Willie Wagtails, White-plumed Honeyeaters and a Restless Flycatcher, but still no Red-tailed Black Cockatoos.

We drove along Benyeo Road to the bitumen. Then along a sandy track through forest that had been control burnt in 2006. This area contained Brown Stringybarks which are the red-tails favourite food source. This area is called Tallagiera State Forest, also known as Benyeo Scrub. Tanya, who is doing work on red-tails conservation told us about the birds’ status. It has been estimated that there were about 1100 birds left in 2004. A few nest boxes have been erected for the red-tails but are seldom used. Tanya thought that it was the availability of food, rather than nesting spots that limited population increase.

Later we visted Lanke Bringalbert which was also dry. When full it can be 2 metres deep. We drove along Natimuk Highway towards Langkoop into Lawsons Lane where some of us saw two Bush Stone-curlews under young Bulokes.

On Bill Wallace’s property “West Wills”, Bill had set aside under the Bush Tender program. Up to 120 Red-tailed Black Cockatoos had been seen on the Bulokes. Dr Martine Marion told us about the work she had done to find why the red-tails fed on certain Bulokes. We were forunate to see two more Bush Stone-curlews, under a large red gum.We saw two kinds of mistletoe on the Bulokes; the Buloke Mistletoe with pink flowers and the Harlequin Mistletoe with red and yellow flowers.

Our lst stop was in the Bringalbert forest where we saw a large Brown Stringybark where red-tails had recently been seen, but not today. The cockatoos had torn branches from the tree. ,

We did not see any Red-tailed Black Cockatoos on our trip. When we arrived back at camp we heard that some other members had seen the cockatoos north of Naracoorte.

Contributed by Les Hanrahan.