Endemic Birds of Tasmania

Arrive in Hobart at your own pace and head to the hotel in Sandy Bay, where check-in is available from 2pm. The group meets at 5.45pm in the hotel meeting room for a briefing on the week ahead, then walks to a local restaurant for dinner. An early night is advisable: Day 2 starts before breakfast.

Overnight: Sandy Bay, Hobart. Meals: D.

Start early and spend the first hours exploring the birding sites around Hobart. Hobart Rivulet Park and Cascade Gardens sit in the city and hold common Tasmanian species close at hand, a useful way to begin a week of endemics. From there, the road climbs Kunanyi / Mount Wellington through a series of short walks that step up through the habitat bands: wet forest gully, dry sclerophyll, then subalpine scrub near the top. This is the country for the skulkers. Scrubtit and Tasmanian scrubwren are heard from dense cover long before they show themselves, and pink robin, olive whistler, Tasmanian thornbill and black currawong all work these slopes. On a clear day, the 1,271m summit looks out over southern Tasmania to the mountains beyond.

The descent is to a picnic lunch, then south to catch the ferry across the d’Entrecasteaux Channel to Bruny Island for the next two nights. The crossing is short but productive: white-bellied sea eagle over the water, kelp and Pacific gulls, black-faced cormorant and Australasian gannet. Check in to the lodge at Alonnah, which looks west over Sunset Bay to Satellite Island and the Hartz Mountains behind.

Overnight: Bruny Island. Meals: B/L/D.

Bruny Island is home to all twelve of Tasmania’s endemic bird species, and the day is spent finding them across the island’s habitats: dry forest, coastal heathland, beaches and farmland. The forty-spotted pardalote is the one to work for, small and quiet and high in the canopy of the white gum stands it cannot live without. Around it are the dusky robin, Tasmanian nativehen, green rosella, yellow wattlebird and the three endemic honeyeaters, along with brush bronzewing, hooded plover and, in the flowering gums, swift parrot. Lunch is at a local eatery. Scanning offshore can produce shy albatross, which breeds only in Tasmania, black-browed albatross, Australasian gannet and short-tailed shearwater.

After dark, the group goes out again for Tasmanian boobook and for the island’s nocturnal mammals. Bruny has no foxes and no devils, which is why eastern quoll and long-nosed potoroo are still readily found here and are difficult to find almost everywhere else.

Overnight: Bruny Island. Meals: B/L/D.

A last morning of birding on Bruny before the ferry back, targeting whatever the first two days did not produce. On the way north to Hobart, the route can take in the Peter Murrell and Truganini conservation areas, depending on time and on which species are still outstanding.

The afternoon is at Gould’s Lagoon Wildlife Sanctuary at Granton, just north of the city on the Derwent, which is the best wetland birding within reach of Hobart and one of the better places in Australia for rails and crakes. Latham’s snipe are present over the summer, and Australian, spotless and Baillon’s crakes all occur, along with little grassbird, Tasmanian nativehen and a range of ducks. Dinner is at a Hobart restaurant.

Overnight: Sandy Bay, Hobart. Meals: B/L/D.

After breakfast, the group drives to Cambridge Aerodrome for a light aircraft flight into Melaleuca, in the Southwest Wilderness. No road reaches Melaleuca; it is accessible only by air, by boat into Port Davey, or on a multi-day walk. The flight crosses the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area and is one of the most scenic in the country.

The buttongrass moorlands around Melaleuca are the only known breeding site on earth for the critically endangered orange-bellied parrot. A feeding table and hide a short walk from the airstrip give some of the best views of the species anywhere.

An easy stroll from the aerodrome takes in buttongrass moorland, tea-tree scrubland and woodland, with a chance of beautiful firetail, striated fieldwren, southern emu-wren, eastern ground parrot and olive whistler. Melaleuca Lagoon and beach are within walking distance. A gourmet lunch made from local Tasmanian produce is served before the scenic flight back in the mid-afternoon.

This day is entirely weather dependent. If flying is not possible, it is rescheduled subject to availability; if rescheduling is not possible, the group visits Mount Field National Park instead and the flight cost is refunded. The aircraft has a 4 kg luggage limit.

Overnight: Sandy Bay, Hobart. Meals: B/L/D.

Drive to the east coast, then take a ferry (about 45 minutes) to Maria Island, where the whole island is a national park; there are no cars and no permanent residents beyond the park rangers, and almost all of Tasmania’s endemic birds occur there. A couple of walks cover the coastal and mountain country, with good chances of Cape Barren goose, Tasmanian nativehen, pied and sooty oystercatcher, hooded plover, various gulls, terns, robins and honeyeaters, and with luck swift parrot and forty-spotted pardalote.

Maria Island is also the easiest place in Tasmania to see marsupials in daylight. Eastern grey and Forester kangaroos, Tasmanian pademelons and bare-nosed wombats graze the open ground around Darlington, where fourteen convict buildings and ruins survive from the probation station, inscribed on the World Heritage list in 2010 as part of the Australian Convict Sites. Tasmanian devils were released here in 2012 as an insurance population against devil facial tumour disease; there are now around 90, though they are nocturnal and rarely seen by day. In the afternoon, the ferry returns to the mainland, stopping at wetlands or mudflats for waders on the way back to Hobart if water levels and conditions allow.

Overnight: Sandy Bay, Hobart. Meals: B/L/D.

After breakfast, farewell your guide and fellow travellers. A transfer to Hobart Airport is included for those who need one.