The weather cleared and Par Avion was ready to fly me to Melaleuca. There is a second airport at Hobart for smaller commercial flights.

This is not the plane we flew in but it’s a similar model.

Things are pretty basic at Melaleuca which includes the airstrip.

Arriving at Melaleuca

The first objective of the trip was to “tick” Oranage-bellied Parrot (OBP) from my list and so after setting up my tent I visited the two bird hides established to monitor the OBP.

The flash looking bird hide on the left also doubles as a museum. The feeding station for the OBP is on the right

A smaller and less flash looking bird hide

A volunteer monitoring the parrots.

The two Orange-bellied Parrots

Feed back from the volunteers is there are more OBP this year than last year but it’s still less than 50. Most of the birds have a band to distinguish the captive bred birds from those that are wild but I did see one bird without any bands.