We’ll be traveling with Inala Tours, a Tasmanian-based tour company, to see the highlights of this unique island. These include
twelve endemic bird species (you’ll have a good chance to see them all) and a number of elusive Australian mammals—platypus, echidna, and the Tasmanian Devil, endemic to Tasmania. The tour will begin in the south of the island on Mount Wellington
near Hobart, where targets will include Scrubtit, Tasmanian Scrubwren, Tasmanian Native Hen, and Black Currawong—all endemics.
Next we’ll do a pelagic trip on the Southern Ocean; Tasmania is famous for its pelagic birding and our targets include a wide variety of shearwaters, petrels, storm petrels, albatrosses, and the Fairy Prion. A trip to Maria Island off the east coast will give us a chance to see more endemic birds since Maria Island is home to eleven of the endemics, including one of the rarest, the Forty-spotted Pardalote. It’s also a good place to see Forester Kangaroos, Bennett’s Wallaby, and Common Wombats.
We head back south where we’ll visit another endemic-rich island, Bruny. Here we’ll visit a variety of habitats and look for shorebirds, raptors, and more endemics, of course, including four honeyeater species and the Green Rosella. We’ll do an evening visit here to see the Little Penguins as they return to their burrows for the night. And on a second evening walk we’ll look for nocturnal mammals (including the Eastern Quoll, the Tasmanian Pademelon, and, with luck, the Long-nosed Potoroo) and birds (Tawney Frogmouth and Tasmanian Boobook.)
Heading north, we’ll visit the Mt. Field area where we’ll have a chance to look for the bizarre Platypus (when members of London’s Royal Academy saw their first dead specimen, they thought it the greatest fake they’d even seen because they couldn’t find the stitches that held its disparate parts together). We end our trip in the Cradle Mountain area, another fabulous place to see endemic birds and mammals. Here we’ll have our best chance of seeing a Tasmanian Devil—the lodge where we’ll stay invites these carnivorous marsupials to drop by for a bite. At the end of the tour you’ll have the option of catching a flight to mainland Australia from Launceston or returning to Hobart and flying from there.
Please refer to the itinerary below. For questions or to sign up, contact Eric Schroeder at travelprogram@goldengateaudbon.
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