Saturday, October 12, 2013

Click here to return to 2013 Australia Trip Reports: http://barry15.com/2013_Australia_Trip/Reports.html

Saturday, 12 October, 2013

Saturday had everything. It had rainforest birding, shore birding, rarities, raptors, farmland birding, and night birding. It had beautiful birds, lifer birds, and lots of birds. We started at 7:30 in the morning and got back at about 9:30 that night. Fourteen hours of birding, which must be the most I have ever done in a day.

Before I get into my report of the day, I want to make two corrections. One of them dates clear back to October 4^th, when I was leaving the Capertee Valley. I showed a picture of a raptor that I called a Little Eagle. Ken and Steve showed me that it was actually a SPOTTED HARRIER, which is actually probably a better bird. I hadn’t considered that, for some reason, but they showed me the markings that made it a Spotted Harrier. I have corrected the report for October 4^th on my web site.

The other correction goes back only to Friday night. I had reported seeing a Wompoo Fruit-Dove at Ken’s house, and on Saturday morning, before breakfast, I saw the species again, and I realized I had gotten it wrong. It was actually an EMERALD DOVE. Here is a picture of one.

It was a silly mistake, but now it is corrected, and Emerald Dove is now part of Friday’s totals.

So, moving on to Saturday - there were also a couple of colorful Rainbow Lorikeets at the feeder in Ken’s yard, looking very bright in the morning sun. Very common birds, but very colorful.

I also got this picture of a male Australian King-Parrot.

I added BAR-SHOULDERED DOVE to my trip list, but my pictures aren’t good enough to show. There wasn’t much light that early in the morning.

So, I had gotten up about 5:00, and we headed out for our big day of birding about 7:30. We started at a patch of rainforest very close to Ken’s house. Here are Steve and Ken, at the start of that walk in the rainforest.

There were tons of birds calling and singing as we started our walk. Steve and Ken could identify all the species of course, and it excited me to hear the list of names they called off. One of the first ones we saw, to add to my list was SPECTACLED MONARCH. I wish I could have gotten a picture of that pretty bird. Next was LARGE-BILLED SCRUBWREN, a plain little bird that I was glad to have help with.

Soon we had kind of distant views of a male PARADISE RIFLEBIRD, silhouetted against the bright cloudy sky in the background. The distinctive body and bill shape made it easy to identify, even for me. I had only had that species at 20% in my spreadsheet, so that was exciting. Next they first heard, then pointed out, a LITTLE SHRIKE-THRUSH. After that was one of our best sightings of the morning, a group of at least a half dozen WHITE-EARED MONARCHS, an uncommon enough bird that I only had it at 10% in my spreadsheet. Soon after that, I picked up a male SCARLET HONEYEATER. That is one I would really like to get a picture of, but they don’t stay still long.

Next were a couple of pigeons. Here is a picture of a BROWN CUCKOO-DOVE.

Here is a WOMPOO FRUIT-DOVE, the one I mixed up with Emerald Dove on Friday night.

The last one I got for my trip list on that walk was SPANGLED DRONGO. We had heard several other species I would have liked to see, one of which is Cicadabird, a lifer I especially want to see on this trip. We even resorted to playing its call, and we heard them in the trees around us, but couldn’t ever spot one. Maybe later in the trip.

We had walked for about two hours, and it was very productive for my trip list.

After a quick stop back at Ken’s house, we headed for Toorbul, on the coast, to look for mangrove species and shorebirds. The first stop was at some mangroves. Almost right away we got onto COLLARED KINGFISHER, which lives only in a mangrove habitat. Here is a picture of one of the two we saw.

Here is a picture of the mangrove habitat.

We were only on the edge of it; we didn’t have to walk through the mud much. There was another species there, too, and I added WHITE-THROATED HONEYEATER. We had a view of the beach at one point, and I picked up my first EASTERN CURLEW. Lastly at that site, Ken found me a MANGROVE GERYGONE, a small bird that I knew I would need help identifying. We had gotten two of the three mangrove species I wanted, and it was coming up to be time for lunch.

Ken took us to a little store that served food, and I guess drinks, and we ordered hamburgers. One of the interesting things about Aussie hamburgers is that they almost always seem to put a slice of beet on them. I like beets, and it goes nicely with the hamburger. Steve and I had ours with cheese and bacon, and Ken had bacon and egg on his. Here is a picture of our little lunch spot, with Ken and Steve sitting on the porch.

After lunch we moved on to the shorebird roost at Toorbul. Shorebirds forage for food on at the edge of the water, generally, and when the tide gets high enough, they find a place to roost until the tide turns and again exposes the sand and mud where their food lives. We had timed our visit to be a couple of hours before high tide, and the shorebirds were just arriving at this roosting site as we got there. At the roosting site, we saw a WHITE-BELLIED SEA-EAGLE with a fish, and I got this picture, which I like very much.

A BRAHMINY KITE also flew through, but unfortunately, I didn’t have a picture opportunity. Ken heard the third mangrove species I wanted, when we got to the roost site, and I added MANGROVE HONEYEATER to my list. I got this picture that was difficult because the bird was so strongly backlit.

I had to process it heavily to be able to see the pattern and the color on it.

Then the shorebird count started. This was my first real chance to tick shorebirds on the trip, so they came thick and heavy. I added GULL-BILLED TERN, BAR-TAILED GODWIT, WHIMBREL, and GREAT KNOT in rapid succession. There were some Sharp-tailed Sandpipers there, but I had counted them already in Sydney at the Sydney Olympic Park. The other small shorebird there was CURLEW SANDPIPER, a bird I wasn’t sure I would see at all on the trip. I want to get a decent picture of them.

There were some CASPIAN TERNS there, a species I see up and down the West Coast at home.

That’s a Bar-tailed Godwit in the background, and here is a picture of some Bar-tailed Godwits flying.

At one point, all the shorebirds on the beach took off at once, making an impressive sight.

Here are a couple of Black Swans, with shorebirds in the foreground.

There was one GREY-TAILED TATTLER in the flock, and several RED-CAPPED PLOVERS. Either Steve or Ken noticed one or two RED KNOTS, too. A little farther down the beach, there were one or two COMMON GREENSHANKS and some BLACK-TAILED GODWITS, the less common godwit species on this coast. There were also a couple of PIED OYSTERCATCHERS, one of the two oystercatcher species I hope to see. Here is one of the Pied Oystercatchers.

So, after an hour or so there, I had added a lot of shorebirds to my trip list. Most of them were common, and I was “stealing” them from my future days, but you take them when you can. All the shorebirds definitely helped build up my total for the day, though.

Next we moved across the passage to Bribie Island, using a shortcut that Ken knew of. On the way, Ken called out “baza” and pulled over. He was referring to a raptor that is fairly uncommon, and one I really wanted to see on this trip. I had only seen one once before, back in 2006. It had flown on, but we got out of the car to take a look anyway. As we left the car, I commented that I was leaving my camera in the car, which would insure a good look at the bird, because when I didn’t have my camera, I always got good looks at some bird and wished I had brought the camera. I really didn’t think it was likely at all that we would even see the bird.

As we were walking back down the road, avoiding the traffic, a beautiful PACIFIC BAZA flew back toward us, almost right overhead and low. It landed in a medium sized tree near the road, and proceeded to give a series of great looks at it, as it moved around in the tree and flew to adjacent trees. Finally I went back to the car for my camera. When I returned with the camera, it was perched out in the open, giving an absolutely perfect photo opportunity. Just as I was ready to take the picture of the day, it flew! If it had sat there for one or two seconds more, I would have gotten it. It flew to a couple of other trees after that, but never sat in the open again. It was a wonderful sighting, with fantastic binocular views of the bird, but I really regret not getting a picture. If you want to see this interesting looking bird, just Google “Pacific Baza”.

We drove across the bridge to Bribie Island and made our way to Kakadu Beach. Bribie Island is a high end suburb of Brisbane, with lots of houses on the water and lots of fancy neighborhoods. Kakadu Beach is another roost for shorebirds, and the beach itself is closed off, to protect the birds. There are two bird hides, though, from which you can observe the birds. We were there to look for a rarity that had been reported there for the last couple of weeks. Finding one bird in the midst of a host of other similar looking birds is tough, but I had two of the best birders in Queensland with me, fortunately. From the first hide, I added CRESTED TERN to my trip list, and down the beach there was a good bird, a BEACH STONE CURLEW. I later got a distant picture of that one.

I wasn’t at all sure I would see one on the trip, so it was great to knock it off as soon as I got to the Queensland coast.

Here is a picture of Kakadu Beach from the first hide.

There was nothing else of interest that we could see from there, so we walked down the path toward the second hide. Along the way, we could see some smaller birds roosting about 10 or 15 feet from the water, and we found a vantage point to see them from. I added LESSER SAND-PLOVER and RED-NECKED STINT, as we all searched the little shorebirds for our target with our scopes. I think it was Steve who found it first, and we all got good scope looks at an ORIENTAL PLOVER (lifer). I had it listed on my spreadsheet, but I hadn’t even assigned a percentage, because it is a rarity that only shows up once in a while. I even got a distant picture that is good enough to identify the bird.

We were all looking at the bird, when Ken noticed another rarity for Southern Queensland, a BROAD-BILLED SANDPIPER (lifer). I had it at 30% in my spreadsheet, but hoped to see it up north at Cairns, not here in Southern Queensland. As it turned out, it was not only great to see it, it was really great to have had Ken with me, because there is no way I would have noticed the differences between it and the Curlew Sandpipers that it was close to.

So, with those successes under our belts, we headed inland to some other sites that Ken knew of. The first one was a place where he, Steve, and Russ had seen some good birds on Friday, on their way home from Bowra. We got there, and almost immediately had excellent views of a couple of ROSE-CROWNED FRUIT-DOVES (lifer). I even got some pictures of this colorful species.

There were other birds there, too, eating the figs in that same tree (you can see the small figs in the pictures above). I added FIGBIRD and GREEN CATBIRD to my trip list. I will see lots of Figbirds up north, but this was my last chance to see Green Catbird. Here is a picture that is heavily backlit, so the colors don’t show well.

Down the road, Ken and Steve were able to show me a couple of RUFOUS FANTAILS, too.

Next we drove through some farmland.

We saw MAGPIE GEESE in the fields, and I got this distant picture.

We stopped at a pond that had quite a few birds around it.

The first bird I added to my list was a GLOSSY IBIS, a good bird to see. Here is a picture.

We got good distant scope views of LATHAM’S SNIPE, another good bird, and one that Ken and Steve had seen there on Friday. I added COMB-CRESTED JACANA to my trip list, but the birds were too far away for good pictures. There were also WHISKERED TERNS flying around over the back of the pond, and Ken told me what field marks to look for to be able to identify them. I can’t overstate how helpful it is for me to have local birders to help me. I might have eventually worked out which tern species these were, but maybe I wouldn’t have.

We moved on and made a couple more stops. At one of them, Ken showed me a distant BUFF-BANDED RAIL in his scope. That is a bird I expect to see close up on my day trip to Lady Elliot Island later in the trip, and I’ll get pictures then, I expect. Much of what we were seeing on Saturday was “stealing” birds from what I will see later, but you take them when you can get them, because you never know. At that same stop, there were a couple of RED-BACKED FAIRY-WRENS, a species I definitely want to get a picture of later in the trip.

At another stop we called up a TAWNY GRASSBIRD, a bird I was very glad to get help with. At that stop, Steve found some distant STRAW-NECKED IBIS, another common bird that I’ll see more of later. I could barely believe how we were racking up the birds – my list of trip birds for the day was getting huge.

It was late afternoon or even early evening by then, so we made our way to the town of Maleny, to get some dinner. We were going to pick up a BBQ’ed chicken, some bread, and some cole slaw, and have a picnic somewhere, but Woolies closed at 5:30 on Saturday, and it was after 6 by then. So, we found a little shopping center and had our choice of fish and chips, Chinese, or pizza. We went for the Chinese, and I actually ate a rare meal in a restaurant on one of my trips.

It was pretty dark by the time we finished dinner, so we started the last phase of our long day of birding – looking and listening for night birds. We drove around country roads with the high beams on, and Steve sat in the front seat and shone a spotlight out the window when appropriate. I had never done this kind of birding before, and I was pretty skeptical, frankly, but they assured me we had a chance to see both birds and mammals.

Sure enough, after 15 or 20 minutes of this, Steve called out “stop”, and we turned around. He had seen a bird on a power line by the road, and when we got back there, it flew down and landed on the side of the road. It was a TAWNY FROGMOUTH, and I got good looks at it with the binoculars before it flew away. We stopped a few other times for possums, and then we went to a campground that Ken knew of. We saw little marsupials called pademelons around the campground, as well as another possum up in a tree. There were a lot of campers there on a beautiful Saturday night, so we moved on down the road past the campsites, and got out of the car. We played the calls of a couple of night birds, and we got responses when we played Southern Boobook, which is the most common owl over here. I had never seen one, and we had three or four of them calling, fairly close by, but we couldn’t ever find one in the foliage of the tall trees. Steve and Ken had powerful spotlights that really lit up the trees. I don’t count birds that I only hear, but it was still exciting to hear them all around us.

So, it was approaching nine o’clock by then, and we were still 20 minutes or more from Ken’s house, so we headed back. We kept watching, though, and in one stretch where Ken said he had seen owls before, Steve again called out to stop, and we went back. There on a post by a driveway was a beautiful EASTERN BARN OWL (lifer). I have seen Barn Owls in the US and in Britain, and I thought they were all one species, but I guess the species has been split into two or three separate species, so this was a lifer for me. I tried for some pictures, and none of them came out except the very last one, just before the owl flew away.

I am really pleased with that picture, and it was a great way to end a fantastic, long day of birding. We were out there for about 14 hours, which is my longest day of birding ever. I added an incredible 50 species to my trip list, to bring me to 252 for the trip. I never would have imagined that I could add so many at this stage of the trip. Five of them were lifers, too, which brought me to 16 lifers for the trip. Absolutely amazing!

We got back to Ken’s house at about 9:30, and I was exhausted. I fell into bed, but had trouble falling asleep, probably because of the excitement of the day. It was a day I will never forget, though – one for the gods.