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Tuesday, 15 October, 2013

 

I slept well last night and was up by about 5:15, so I’m keeping to my early schedule very well.  I had my breakfast and was out of here by about 7, I think.  I headed out to Inskip Point, to look for the elusive Black-breasted Button-quail (BBBQ).  Inskip Point is the place to see BBBQ, but it isn’t always easy.  I had seen one in 2008, though, so I was optimistic.

 

As soon as I got out of the car, there were a couple of Red-backed Fairy-wrens there, a male and a female.  I took some pictures of the male, and then never saw the species again all day.  Here is a male Red-backed Fairy-wren.

 

That makes five species of fairy-wrens that I have shown you, and there is one more to go, I hope, as it would be a lifer.

 

Also, before I really got going, I saw a friarbird, and I am convinced it was a HELMETED FRIARBIRD, even though this is 100 miles or more south of the range shown in the field guides.  I have a report from a very experienced birder who saw them here last November, and I had an excellent look at the one today, and I’m going with it, despite the field guides.  I’ll see plenty more of them up north, so it isn’t a big deal.

 

I soon ran into a guy with a camera with a huge lens, and he asked me what I was looking for.  I told him “the button-quail”, and he said he had seen 3 of them in the last couple of days.  He then described his encounters with them, and it just didn’t sound credible to me.  I wonder if he knows the difference between a button-quail and the Bar-shouldered Doves that also run around on the ground in the area.  The behavior he ascribed to the birds, and the locations he saw them in make me wonder, that’s all.  I have no way of knowing, of course, and maybe it is just sour grapes on my part, since I didn’t see one all day, but I do wonder.

 

Out at the actual point, on the water, I saw birds.  Two other birds I hoped to see there were Common Tern and Little Tern.  Little Tern is tiny, and would be easy to identify, and I didn’t see any today.  Common Tern is a little harder, as it looks rather like a Gull-billed Tern.  I got this picture, which turned out to be a Gull-billed Tern.

 

It’s a lot easier for me to tell the difference when I can study a picture, so I took a lot of pictures of terns today, and all the ones with black bills seemed to be Gull-billed Terns.  A Common Tern would have a much thinner black bill, as well as other identifying marks.

 

At the end of Inskip Point, there are barges that will take you and your vehicle across the strait to Fraser Island.  That is a popular thing to do, and you need a 4 WD and a permit to do it.  Here is a picture of one of the barges.

 

The barge just pulls up to the beach, and the people just drive their vehicles on and pay their money, and they get taken across to Fraser Island.  I guess you can camp over there if you have a permit, but I don’t think there is any accommodation there, although I might be wrong about that.  You can see Fraser Island in the background of that picture.

 

Here is what the area at the point looks like from the land side.

 

Here is an example of the habitat I was searching today for the BBBQ.

 

They are a ground dwelling bird, they scratch around in the leaf litter, and they are shy and hard to see.  The males and the females look rather different, but they are the same size and shape.

 

The tide was going out, and shorebirds were starting to forage.  I took a break from the BBBQ search and took some photos.  I got this picture of a Curlew Sandpiper that I like.

 

Here is the same bird with a Red-necked Stint for a size comparison.  The stint is the smaller one.

 

Here is a cute little Red-capped Plover.

 

Back to the search for BBBQ, I saw a Varied Triller (one of my Saturday big day birds), and I chased it to get this picture.

 

I kept just missing better pictures, as the bird kept flitting around.

 

There were Lace Monitors there, and here is a picture of a three foot long one.

 

At one point, I played the call of a bird I hadn’t seen yet, because I had read they lived there at Inskip Point.  I got a response in the distance, and I went over there and had two FAIRY GERYGONES (lifer) calling and flitting around.  That was one we had tried for on Sunday and missed.  It was great to get a lifer, as compensation for not seeing the Black-breasted Button-quail.

 

I quit about eleven o’clock and drove back to my excellent room for my humble lunch and some computer stuff.  I wrote yesterday’s report at that time, which caught me up.  I also processed the pictures from this morning, so I would be able to do this report tonight.  At about 2:30, I headed out again to look for the BBBQ.

 

It wasn’t as hot today, which was great.  The high was about 80 degrees F, which is a lot better than the 90 of the last few days.  I walked around for another couple of hours, but never saw my species.  I did take this picture of a Rainbow Lorikeet.  I have shown them before, two or three times, but they are so colorful that I can’t resist shooting them.

 

Here is a picture of a Bar-shouldered Dove, which is what I suspect my photographer buddy had actually seen, rather than the BBBQ.

 

They were walking around on the ground, like he described the birds he had seen, and I just wonder.  They don’t look much like a BBBQ, but I don’t know his level of knowledge or experience.  He didn’t have binoculars, though, which makes me think he wasn’t really a birder, but a photographer.

 

I did pick up another species for my trip list, SILVEREYE.  I tried for pictures, but the only ones I got were not in focus.

 

At about 4:45, I threw in the towel and came back here to my room.  Sometimes the birder wins and sometimes the bird wins; today victory went to the Black-breasted Button-quail.  I think I will try again, one more time, in the morning.  I only have about two and a half hours of driving time to my next destination, which is Bundaberg, so I don’t have to get out of here early.  I suspect that if I don’t get the button-quail, I will get skunked tomorrow, because there just doesn’t seem like much I can see that would be new.  There are a very few species, but I don’t have any particular places to look for them, and I don’t have any particular birding sites to stop at on my route tomorrow.

 

This is about the halfway point of my trip, and I have about a thousand miles to go still, before I fly back to Sydney from Cairns and then fly home.  There are lots of good birds waiting for me up north, and several new places to visit, as well as a couple of Aussie birders to meet, who will help me out, no doubt.

 

So, I added three species today, of which one was a lifer.  That brings me to 261 species, of which 18 are lifers.