Australia: Tasmania

Our Tasmania birding tour begins after lunch. After meeting, we will visit Mt. Wellington and other birding spots near Hobart. Overnight Hobart.

Today we will travel to Mt. Field National Park, which offers spectacular scenery and pristine forests, looking for birds and other wildlife along the way. This park is also part of the UNESCO World Heritage Area and the vast Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area. We will enjoy several short walks in the park and keep an eye out for platypus before we take a ferry to Bruny Island. Night on Bruny Island.

All twelve of Tasmania’s endemic species are found on Bruny: Tasmanian Native-hen, Green Rosella, Dusky Robin, Tasmanian Thornbill, Forty-spotted Pardalote, Tasmanian Scrubwren, Scrub-Tit, Yellow Wattlebird, Black Currawong, Strong-billed Honeyeater, Black-headed Honeyeater, and Yellow-throated Honeyeater.

We’ll spend two full days birding on the island targeting the endemics and the non-endemics that are more abundant on Tasmania than on the mainland, including Hooded Plover, Brush Bronzewing, Swift Parrot, Flame and Pink Robins, Crescent Honeyeater, and the Forest Raven, Tasmania’s only Corvid. Along the coast we should see Fairy Penguins, Black-faced Cormorants Short-tailed Shearwaters, and other seabirds. We will attempt to schedule a visit to the Inala Reserve where we have a good chance of seeing Forty-spotted Pardalote. At night we will spotlight for marsupials including Bennett’s Wallaby, Tasmanian Pademelon, Long-nosed Potoroo, and Eastern Quoll. Overnights on Bruny Island.

We will return to Hobart, stopping at Peter Murrell Reserve to search for any species we may have missed. Today is the final day of the tour. Participants can opt to stay in Hobart and fly home the next day or take an afternoon flight to Sydney and fly home from there the following day. Participants should book their flights after 3 pm today if they choose to depart today.

You can also extend your visit and take an optional flight to the wild southwest corner of Tasmania in search of Orange-belled Parrots. This is the most reliable site for this species and there is also a chance of encountering Ground Parrot, Black Currawong and Southern Emu-Wren. The flight is weather dependent and is at an additional cost.