In 1981, I received $1485 from the South Australian Reserves Advisory Committee to survey the birds of conservation parks in the SE of South Australia. Tomorrow I am going back to three parks: Padthaway, Glen Roy and Penola. Here is a conservation park map from circa 1980. 1/8

2/8: My favourite bird in the planet is the black-chinned honeyeater. It is one of Australia’s archetypal declining woodland birds. They are rapidly disappearing in South Australia. (I can’t take bird photos so this is from my friend Mat Gilfedder @GilfedderMat)

3/8: In the early 1980s we found black-chinned honeyeaters at Padthaway Conservation Park and we could calculate densities for them along our 5 km transect through stringybark (B), SA blue gum and manna gum (A) woodland. Here is the vegetation map I made in 1982.

4/8: In this 1982 field notebook you can see one of our several black-chinned honeyeater records in Padthaway “1 B-c He 5l”. The 5 means it was 5 metres from the transect and the l means it was in Eucalyptus leucoxylon. They like to tear at stuff: bark, twigs, flowers …

5/8: Black-chinned honeyeaters were there in 1982, so why wouldn’t they be there this week? Padthaway is a relatively large park locally, but 87% of the 2.1 million ha in the south east of SA has been cleared. This sort of fragmentation can be the death knell for many species.

6/8: Birds SA have assembled all the data they can on the distribution of every SA species available at https://birdssa.asn.au/birding-info/distribution-maps/maps-passerines/. It looks like black-chinned honeyeaters were across the entire region 40 years ago.

7/8: But recent eBird data suggests that their range has contracted. The most recent record is 2017 in Bangham Conservation Park, and the other records are from a new conservation park, Geegeela, in 2011. Things look grim, the distribution appears to have collapsed.

8/8: Will I find them? While black-chinned honeyeaters are visually very similar to two other species – white-naped honeyeater and brown-headed honeyeater – they have a very distinctive call http://www.graemechapman.com.au/library/sounds.php?c=588&p=95. Wish me luck.

This is why I like birding - all I need for 10 hours in the field. Luxury items on the right. – bei Padthaway

Perfect habitat - leucoxylon and viminalis, 330 minutes of transects, no black-chinned honeyeater; Brown treecreeper is some compensation, and a picnic table for lunch, luxury.