Featured Bird Series

An initiative which was started in January 2020 is that all currently-financial HBOC members receive a monthly fact sheet about a local species. Each month we pick a relatively common species of the Hunter Region to be our “featured bird” for that month. Fittingly, the first species to be covered was HBOC’s emblem, the Golden Whistler.

 

All current HBOC members receive an email approximately mid-month with a fact sheet containing information about how to identify the species, where it occurs in the Hunter Region, what subspecies occur locally, how its name originated, plus usually a few interesting additional snippets about the bird.

Each species fact sheet draws heavily on HBOC’s existing resources, such as:

  • Our annual Bird Reports for the Hunter Region (including the distribution maps and migratory time lines within them).
  • Our 11,000-plus strong bird image library (consisting of photos taken by current or former club members)
  • Papers published in our journal The Whistler.
  • Local experts’ knowledge.

These fact sheets will not be placed onto the website until eventually they become archived. Note also that they are the copyright property of the Hunter Bird Observers Club Inc.

The monthly Featured Bird fact sheets

All current HBOC members receive these bulletins immediately each month by email, in a more-reader friendly format than the pdf versions that are archived here. Sometimes the page breaks in the pdf version aren’t quite as would be ideal.

Note that copies of each fact sheet are only added to the website intermittently.

Year January February March April May June July August September October November December
2020 Golden Whistler Spangled Drongo Royal Spoonbill Fan-tailed Cuckoo Superb Lyrebird Red-necked Avocet Striated Pardalote Brown Falcon Wedge-tailed Shearwater Bar-tailed Godwit Wonga Pigeon Purple Swamphen
2021 Yellow-rumped Thornbill Brahminy Kite Red-necked Stint Aust. Owlet-nightjar Rose Robin Hardhead Red-capped Plover Aust. Brush-turkey Rufous Fantail Australian Pelican White-faced Storm-Petrel New Holland Honeyeater
2022 Shining Bronze-cuckoo Rockwarbler Black-fronted Dotterel Chestnut Teal Eastern Spinebill White-faced Heron Swamp Harrier Red-browed Treecreeper Common Greenshank White-winged Triller Aust. King-parrot Gould’s Petrel
2023 Brown Quail Australasian Shoveler Little Grassbird Yellow-faced Honeyeater Speckled Warbler Common Bronzewing Aust. Figbird Short-tailed Shearwater Leaden Flycatcher Pacific Golden Plover Sooty Oystercatcher Little Tern
2024 Scaly-breasted Lorikeet Little Penguin Great Cormorant Welcome Swallow Dusky Woodswallow Red-kneed Dotterel Caspian Tern Pacific Baza Far Eastern Curlew Eastern Yellow Robin Blue-faced Honeyeater Zebra Finch
2025 Great Egret Brown Thornbill Whimbrel Red-browed Finch Greater Crested Tern Indian Yellow-nosed Albatross Southern Boobook White-bellied Sea-Eagle Black Swan White-plumed Honeyeater Pied Stilt Regent Bowerbird