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Sunday, 13 October, 2013

 

I was up again about 5, after our huge day yesterday.  I had had trouble falling asleep Saturday night, and I was awake during the night more than I have been on this trip so far.  I have two or three separate sleeping problems, but Saturday night was still better than many of my nights at home. I usually sleep a lot better when I’m traveling than when I’m at home, and that has certainly been true on this trip so far.  Anyway, the bottom line is that I felt weak and tired all day on Sunday, and I think it was due to my poor sleep on Saturday night, but maybe also partly due to the huge, long day we had had on Saturday.

 

Our birding day on Sunday started about 7:30, with a walk in the rainforest just up the road from Ken’s house.  Ken’s wife, Megan, joined us on the walk.  Here is a picture of Megan and Ken, as we started out.

 

I had nagged Ken to take me on this walk, because he had gotten me a bird called a Logrunner in 2008 on this walk, and I wanted it this year.  I think he had resisted because a walk in his neighborhood wasn’t really very interesting to him, but he went along with it eventually, because he is a very nice guy.  So, we walked in the woods.  It was very pleasant, but we never saw a Logrunner, unfortunately.  Sunday was not a lucky birding day, for some reason.  At one point we looked out over the Mary Valley from the lookout at Mapleton Falls.  Here is the scene from there.

 

On our way back to the main loop trail, Megan almost stepped on a tree snake.

 

The snake is not venomous, but it would startle anyone to almost step on a 3 or 4 foot long snake, especially in Australia, which has something like 9 of the 10 most venomous snakes in the world.  I made those numbers up, but it is something like that.

 

Here we are, walking in the rainforest.

 

You can tell already that this isn’t going to be a very birdy day, as I am showing so many non-bird pictures.  Here is a picture of a pretty dragonfly we saw on our walk.

 

At least a dragonfly can fly, which is sort of birdlike.

 

I did pick up PALE YELLOW ROBIN for my trip list, and I had great looks at it.  I could see the differences between it and its cousin, the Eastern Yellow Robin. 

 

So, after we dipped on the Logrunner, Ken, Steve and I headed out to several sites, to look for birds.  We drove on back roads, to look for a falcon that I need, but we never saw one. 

 

Enroute to our first major destination, we stopped at a site where Ken had seen a bird I would like to get, but there weren’t any of them around.  There were a lot of Eastern Water Dragons, though, and I got this picture.

 

Our first real destination was the sewage treatment plant at Cooroy.  We found it, but the gates were closed and locked.  We found the site office and there was a guy on duty on a Sunday afternoon.  He told us that it was only open to birdwatching on weekdays, though.  I got the info I needed so I could go back on Monday, on my way to my next destination, but it was a washout for Sunday.

 

Next we went to the Noosa Botanic Gardens, to look for an uncommon duck that I still needed, and had been seen there a few weeks ago.  This stop worked out fine, and I added FRECKLED DUCK to my trip list, and got this picture of two of them.

 

Freckled Duck is normally a very difficult bird to see, but there seems to have been a population explosion of them this year, and they are being seen all over Australia, in places they aren’t usually seen.

 

We saw a Latham’s Snipe there, too, and I got pictures of a Comb-crested Jacana, walking across the lily pads.

 

I had seen them on Saturday, but they were too far away for pictures then.  Here is a close-up that is kind of blurry, but it shows the large foot of the bird, which is what enables it to walk on the lily pads, no doubt.

 

While we were walking back to the car, we saw a couple of Wompoo Fruit-Doves.  Here is a picture of one from the back.

 

And, here is a picture of the same bird from the front.  Unfortunately, the backlighting makes the purple breast look much duller than it actually is.

 

I’m not sure of the exact order of events here now, but at about this time, we took a break for lunch.  We had passed a Subway sandwich place, and we went back there and ate our sandwiches in their nice air conditioned store.  It was about 90 degrees F by then, I think, and humid, so the a/c felt good.

 

After lunch we stopped at a site to look for Fairy Gerygone, but didn’t find any, despite playing the calls.  I did add VARIED TRILLER there, though.  I have a couple of pictures, but they don’t show much, as I was right underneath the bird, so I’m not going to show them.

 

The next thing on our plan was to try for a very hard bird to see, a Lewin’s Rail.  Steve had been with a woman who saw one, and he took us back to that site, so we could try for a sighting.  We found the place and bashed our way back into the bushes and stood there for ten or fifteen minutes, playing the call and looking and listening for a response.  We struck out.  No joy.

 

As we left there, I got this picture of a Dollarbird on a wire.  For some reason I don’t understand, I especially like that bird.  I show it both because it is the best picture of a Dollarbird I have gotten on this trip so far, and because I got lucky, as the second picture will show you.

 

In this next picture, I was ready to shoot another one, and the bird took off.  I shot anyway, and I got a picture that shows the white wing patches of this species.

 

After that stop, we drove down the Sunshine Coast, which is what the Queensland coast north of Brisbane is called.  It is a vacation place, as well as a retirement place, I think.  It is a bit more subdued than the coast south of Brisbane, which is called the Gold Coast.  The main city on the Gold Coast is named Surfers Paradise, which seems to me to be a good indication of the tackiness of the Gold Coast, which I visited in 2002.  The Sunshine Coast isn’t as tacky, it seems to me, but it is still much too built up for my taste.

 

We drove through fancy towns with high rise condos and apartments, not to mention restaurants and fancy shops that were Newport Beach wannabes, in my opinion.  We stopped at several places, to look for terns and shorebirds that live on rocky coasts.  There were way too many people around on a hot Sunday afternoon, though, and we consistently were disappointed.  I did see several EASTERN OSPREYS, which was satisfying, as I hadn’t really expected to see ospreys on the trip.  They split the species from the North American one a few years ago, so it will count toward my yearly total, as well as toward my trip total.

 

Here is a picture of one part of the Sunshine Coast, which stretches for 30 or 40 miles, I think.

 

We fought the traffic, the heat, and the crowds, and eventually I did get another bird.  At one of our stops, we had to walk a bit, to get to where we could see the rocks, and although there weren’t any birds on the rocks, Steve and Ken spotted some birds flying offshore, in the quite strong winds we had that day.  They showed me where the birds were and then told me the field marks to look for to identify them as SHORT-TAILED SHEARWATERS (lifer).  That was a nice bonus bird, and it made up for not being able to see the terns and rocky shore birds that we were looking for.

 

With that, we gave it up.  We were hot and we were all tired, I think, after our huge day on Saturday, so we headed for home, getting there about 3, I think.  Megan and the kids were just leaving for some activity, so it was us three birders at home for about three or four hours.  We had some beers and sat in the air conditioned part of Ken’s house and did computer stuff.  I processed my pictures from our huge Saturday and wrote some of the report for Saturday.  After he caught up with his email and other computer stuff, Ken prepared dinner for all of us.  He cooked up some potatoes and onions and probably a lot of other good stuff, along with chicken, sausages, and kangaroo meat.  He made some sliced beets (which Aussies call beetroot) and green salad with tomatoes as well.  When the family got home about 7, we had a great family dinner.  The kangaroo was really good.  It tasted like Ken had marinated it in something, and I liked it a lot.  I embarrassed myself by eating so much, I think, but it was all delicious.  The sausages, which looked like hot dogs, were excellent, as was the chicken.

 

We hadn’t had good luck with our birding that day, but I still had added another 5 species to my trip list, and one of them was a lifer.  On Sunday night, my totals stood at 257 for the trip, of which 17 were lifers.  After dinner, Steve headed for home, which is in the state to the south, New South Wales, about four hours away.  I got to bed about 9:15, in an attempt to stay on my early schedule.  On Monday, I was scheduled to be off alone again, headed for Cairns, about 1000 miles (1600 kilometers) up the coast.  My trip was almost half over, and it was time to head for the tropical north, although it will take me more than a week to get there.

 

So, that was Sunday, and I’m writing this on Monday night.  I expect it will be tomorrow before I am able to process my pictures from today and get today’s report written.  I hope to catch up eventually, though.