Today for the first time I have had corellas and currawongs at my house, haven't seen them here in nearly 2 year (although I heard corellas fly over occasionally). We are only about 15-20km from the closest fires 'as the crow flies', do you reckon they have moved down from the hills, particularly the currawongs which are usually more of a lower slopes type bird, often seen at ski resorts and place a little higher in altitude...

 

 

Interesting...

Edited March 15, 200916 yr by melbournebudgies

I guess there's not a lot of food left for them in the bushfire areas, could well be related.

yeah the birds and others animals would have to travel further out now to find food.

I'm sure it is!

 

In Diamond Creek we normally have thousands of short beaked corellas but in the fortnight after the fires they all but completely disappeared! And we were seeing a lot of birds that are normally seen further up towards St Andrews - many black cockatoos and some other birds that I didn't recognise (I must find my bird book to remember what they are)

 

A friend in Strathewen said that virtually all the birds had disappeared in the first week after the fire. She also said that they actually saw birds literally dropping out of the sky as the fire came closer and the radiant heat was too much for the smaller animals.

 

The birds are starting to return to their home bases now that shoots are reappearing. Also as soon as they were allowed to return to their areas, many locals started scattering seed and putting out water to encourage the birds to return.