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Wednesday, 9 October, 2013

 

Wow, it was another incredible day, not in bird numbers, especially, since I have now seen almost all of the ones I could expect to see here, but in terms of a really great birding day.

 

I’m doing very well, sticking with my early schedule, and I was in bed shortly after 9, then up just before 5 this morning.  When I went to bed last night, I was trying to send out my report, but the connection was so slow that I went to bed and let it run.  When I got up at about midnight to pee, I checked it, and it had timed out.  So, I started it up again, and went back to bed.  When I got up this morning, it had again timed out.  That shows just how marginal the connection here is.  Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t.  I managed to hit a good time while I was preparing my breakfast and taking care of my morning stuff, and I got yesterday’s report out.  I’m not even trying to update my web site.  That will have to wait for a better internet connection.

 

So, at about 6:20, I drove over to the shearers’ quarters and said g’day to the guys.  The plan for the morning was to try to find a lifer species of pardalote for me.  They had talked to some guy last night and gotten directions to where there was a nest, supposedly.  Before we could even start out, though, Ken heard a bird calling and he tracked it down.  I got a good look at a HORSFIELD’S BRONZE-CUCKOO, to my delight.  We hadn’t even really started birding, and I had one for my trip list.  How good is that?  It flew before I could get close enough for a picture.

 

We set out across country toward the Bore Drain.  I explained what a bore was the other day, and the drain is a channel they have dug that allows water to flow somewhere, but I’m not sure where it is going or why.  Here is a picture of the Bore Drain.

 

Our instructions were to find the bridge over the drain and look about 100 yards (meters) downstream of that.  We didn’t know which side of the drain to be on.  Steve could easily jump over the drain at just about any point, and Ken could get across well, too, but Russ and I needed to find narrow places to cross.  We set off downstream, to look for the bridge and the pardalote.

 

There were a lot of White-winged Trillers at one point, but I couldn’t ever get a picture.  I did get this picture of a female Hooded Robin, though.

 

The male was around, too, and I shot him as well.

 

The Aussies all heard another cuckoo about that time, and we got good looks at a PALLID CUCKOO.  I even got pictures.

 

 

There were fairy-wrens around from time to time, and I finally got a couple of pictures of a male White-winged Fairy-wren.  They don’t sit still for long.

 

 

I’m such a sucker for blue colored birds.

 

We came to the bridge and worked our way farther downstream, but never saw or heard the pardalote we were looking for.  Eventually we headed back the way we had come.  One guy or another would hear something and head off on his own for a while, but I stuck close to the drain, as we loosely made our way back the way we had come.  At one point I sat for a while and rested, and watched the various birds come to the water or flit around.  It was a pretty birdy walk, maybe because it was early, or maybe because of the proximity of the water.  I took this picture of a Spiny-cheeked Honeyeater.

 

Here are the other guys, working their way along the bore, looking and listening.

 

 

You can see the bridge there, but we continued upstream beyond it, despite the directions we had.  I took this picture of a Yellow-throated Miner about that time.

 

Soon we saw a couple of other birders up ahead, and they were looking up into a tree along the bore drain.  Then we noticed that just beyond them was another bridge!  It turned out that we had started just a little too far downstream, and we had found a second bridge, not the one we were supposed to find.  When we got to where the other birders were, they showed us the RED-BROWED PARDALOTE (lifer).  Success!  The bird was singing its heart out, constantly, from an open perch, high in a tree.  I took a couple of dozen pictures, but it was up high and the light was from the wrong direction, so these two are the best I could do.

 

 

I would have liked to see the spots on the top of its head and the colors on the wings, but at least I had seen the bird and actually gotten pictures.  It kept up its singing for at least ten minutes, but by the time Ken caught up with us, it had just left.  He did manage to find it again, but I don’t think he got as prolonged a look as we had had.  We found out that the other birders had played the song, and that is why it was singing so long when we got there – it was trying to locate the intruder Red-browed Pardalote in its territory.  We haven’t been using playback here at Bowra, maybe because it is against the rules here, or maybe for other reasons.  I haven’t asked, as I am just along for the ride with these three expert birders.

 

So, having found the pardalote after a couple of hours of tramping up and down the bore drain, we headed back to the shearers’ quarters for morning tea.  I stuck around the bore drain a little longer, because I was trying for a picture of another fairy-wren species, the Variegated Fairy-wren.  I did manage a picture of a male.

 

The breeze has ruffled the feathers behind the head, giving it that strange look at the back of its neck.  There are three fairy-wren species here at Bowra, and I had gotten pictures of the males of each of them.

 

On my way back to the shearers’ quarters, I went around the Lagoon.  There was a new bird there for my Bowra list (I have been counting how many birds I can see here at Bowra), a Royal Spoonbill.  There was a third Yellow-billed Spoonbill today, too.  Here is the Royal Spoonbill, with its black bill.

 

Here is a picture that shows both spoonbill species.

 

Here is a picture of the Lagoon, with the shearers’ quarters in the background.

 

Here is a picture of the common room at the shearers’ quarters.

 

There are six bedrooms off the central room, with either one or two beds in each one.  There is a kitchen at the back on the right, and I guess the bathroom facilities must be out back, in another building, or maybe in an attached wing.

 

So, we had our “tea”, which consisted of a Diet Coke for me.  It was very refreshing after our tramp around the grounds.

 

We talked to the two birders we had seen at the pardalote site, and they told us where they had seen another species yesterday, Banded Lapwing.  I wanted to see that one and the guys were willing, so we set off in Ken’s car.  We drove around, but it was getting hot by then, and the lapwings would probably have been resting in the shade by then.  At one point Ken thought he heard an interesting sounding bird, so we all piled out and had a little ramble through the woods.  We didn’t find whatever he had heard, but Steve manage to come up with another one I needed very much – one I would never have been able to identify on my own, even if I ever found one – INLAND THORNBILL.  That was number four for my trip list for the day.

 

Russ had seen a couple of Varied Sittellas, but we were unable to re-locate them.  As it turned out, at our next stop, we did get onto a couple of them, and I even got a poor picture that I had to heavily process.

 

I had seen them in the Capertee Valley, but the ones here are a different subspecies, so they look a bit different.

 

On one of our little walks away from the car, Ken pointed out a Red-winged Parrot.  I hadn’t seen one perched yet on the trip, and I was able to get just one picture.  Unfortunately, some branches are blocking the eye of the bird, but the picture does show the pretty colors.

 

We never found the lapwings, but we had fun and saw some birds.  Car birding with Aussie experts consists of driving along slowly with the windows open, listening for birds as well as watching for them.  Whenever something interesting is seen or heard, everyone piles out, and we have a nice little walk in the bush, just leaving the car in the middle of the track.  We usually get out of sight of the car, but so far, we have always found our way back.

 

It was lunch time by then, and Ken said we would go out again about 3 PM, when it started to cool down a bit.  I had my lunch and processed the pictures from this morning and started this report.  Now I’ll leave it here and continue it tonight or tomorrow.

 

OK, it is Wednesday evening now, and I’ll see if I can finish this.

 

I went over to the shearers’ quarters about 3:30, and the guys were sitting in the shade, watching the Lagoon.  I joined them for a while, and then we headed off on a quest for a bird that hasn’t been reported here for a few weeks, Redthroat.  We drove up to the Gravel Pits, where they had last been seen, nesting supposedly, but six weeks ago.  We parked the car and set off into the bush again.  Here is the habitat there.

 

We walked through the bush.  I wonder if these guys were trying to walk the Yank into the ground.  I was certainly feeling all the exercise today on that last little walk of a mile or two.  It was still pretty hot, which didn’t help any, maybe 85 or 90 degrees F.  We never got a sniff of a Redthroat, and we didn’t see much.  I added Weebill to my Bowra list, but other than that, the only interesting thing was when Russ spotted a large bird that Ken identified as a juvenile Pallid Cuckoo.  Here is a picture of that sucker.

 

Earlier in this report, there were two pictures of mature Pallid Cuckoos, but the juvenile one is much more strongly marked.  If you will remember your lessons, as I’m sure you do, cuckoos lay their eggs in other birds’ nests.  When the egg hatches, the young cuckoo pushes the host species babies out of the nest, and the host parents raise the cuckoo as if it were their own baby.  In this case, the host parents were Singing Honeyeaters, a much smaller bird than the Pallid Cuckoo.  The poor Singing Honeyeater parents must have had to work their asses off to feed this huge baby cuckoo.  By this time the cuckoo had fledged, but it still was getting fed by the honeyeaters.  Here is a picture of the poor little Singing Honeyeater, bringing food to the cuckoo, seemingly cowed somewhat by the much larger cuckoo.

 

Here is another picture that shows the size difference.

 

So, that was an interesting interlude, but we still had to walk a long distance back to the car.  I managed to survive, with a minimum of whingeing, I think, and we headed back to the homestead area.

 

The Aussies were planning to go to the waterhole we had visited a couple of days ago, to see what came in to drink as the sun set.  I was bushed, but this was an opportunity that wasn’t going to come along again, so I decided to join them. They picked up some beer at the shearers’ quarters, and I got a couple of cans for myself out of my fridge.  I had borrowed a plastic chair from the shearers’ quarters, and the other guys had their own chairs and folding stools.

 

There was a couple already there at the water hole, but we set ourselves up a discreet distance away, and settled in.  The beer hit the spot, and it was very relaxing to sit there and watch the wildlife as it came in to have a drink.  There weren’t any emus this evening, for some reason, but we had birds and kangaroos.

 

The real excitement came when the Major Mitchell’s Cockatoos flew in.  There was a flock of nineteen of them, which was a larger group than any of the Aussie birders had ever seen before.  What an incredibly special experience it was, to watch them perched in the dead trees, and eventually come to the water to drink.  Cameras were clicking nonstop.  Here is a picture of a couple of them in a tree, acting in what would seem to be an affectionate way.  They were grooming each other, and in this picture it looks like they are kissing, which is absurd, but here is the picture.

 

Here is a picture of the waterhole and the dead trees behind it, with the cockatoos and galahs in them.

 

Eventually, after ten or fifteen minutes, the Major Mitchell’s came down to the water.  Here is one with its beautiful crest up.

 

Here is a nice study of three of them at the water.

 

At one point, I captured an image of fourteen of them at the water at one time.

 

You can see from the flying one that the underside of their wings have nice pink patches.

 

Here is another one, in the late afternoon light.

 

And, finally, here is a picture of a mother kangaroo and her joey, cautiously approaching the water, very much aware of us.

 

That last picture was taken in extremely poor light, so it is pretty mediocre, but the two kangaroos were really cute as they approached the water.

 

So, we stuck around until it got pretty dark - much too dark to take any more pictures.  Some Common Bronzewings flew in and stayed for a while and then left again.  About 6:40 we gave it up and drove back to the homestead area.  It was an incredibly relaxing way to finish the long day, and I’m really glad I decided to join them for it.  On the way back to the homestead area, we talked about it, and that is when each of them admitted that that was the largest number of Major Mitchell’s Cockatoos that any of them had ever seen at one time.  That is really saying something, as these guys are very experienced Aussie birders.  It made the whole experience seem even more special to me.

 

So, I got four more species for my trip list today, of which one was a lifer.  I don’t recall seeing Inland Thornbill before, and I never would have gotten them here if it weren’t for the help I had, but I see by my spreadsheet that I checked them off in 2006, which was when I went to Western Australia.  Anyway, that puts me at 197 species for the trip, of which 11 are lifers.

 

Tomorrow I plan to leave here, and spend the next two days traveling.  The idea is to get to Ken’s house in Mapleton, inland from the Sunshine Coast of southern Queensland, on Friday afternoon.  Ken, Russ, and Steve plan to drive to Dalby tomorrow, but that seemed too long a drive to me when I was planning my trip, and I plan to stop at Moonie, which is really just a roadhouse at a junction of two highways.  Supposedly, I will have mobile phone access there, which will give me internet access.  We will see.  I think it is about a 5 or 6 hour drive, but we will see about that, too.  If I get going early enough tomorrow, I plan to make one last drive around the Homestead loop here, to try for the Banded Lapwings.  It is a longshot, but I don’t know what else I might get tomorrow, as I am basically just driving, not birding anywhere in particular.  Well, I do have a couple of places to stop, but there is nothing special about them.  I can hope for a sighting of a couple or three parrots species I haven’t seen but I most likely will get skunked tomorrow.

 

So, Bowra has been incredible again.  I would have gotten about half as many birds here, if Ken and his mates hadn’t come out here when I was here, and I wouldn’t have had half the fun I had tagging along with these guys.  It has truly been an experience for the gods, not something I say lightly.  All I can add to that is – what a life!