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Saturday, 19 October, 2013

 

Today was another travel day, with a couple of birding stops.  I was up early again, and got away a little after 8.  I had gotten distracted by a bird on the yard outside my motel room, and had emailed pictures of it to Ken, my Queensland birding guru.  He informed me it was only a Little Friarbird, a bird I had seen many times already.  I think it was an immature bird, maybe recently fledged, and that threw me off.

 

Anyway, I hit the road, with about 3 or 4 hours of driving ahead of me.  My first stop was at Clairview, a tiny community on the ocean, at the only point where my route today took me next to the ocean.  I used the rest room there, and I scanned the rocky beach for oystercatchers, but I didn’t see anything.

 

My next stop was at a place called Koumala, to try for a bird called a Zitting Cisticola.  I had instructions from a book as to where and how to look, so I took the side road and gave it a go.  I saw nothing on my first pass, but as I was getting ready to turn around, a large bird came walking across the road in front of me.  It was an AUSTRALIAN BUSTARD, a bird I expected to see eventually, but I didn’t know they came this far south or this far east.  Score!  I had my bird for the day, and I was off the schneid.

 

Since I was in the sugar cane fields, I thought a picture of the fields with the mountains in the background was in order.  The young cane is in front, and the more mature cane is behind it.

 

On my way back to the highway, I drove slowly past the tall sugar cane, where the bird I was looking for supposedly lives.  To my amazement, I did see a little bird, perched up on a shoot sticking up out of the cane.  I took a look through my binoculars, and I even got a couple of pictures.  One came out very blurry, but the other one is fairly sharp.  Here it is.

 

I don’t feel comfortable naming it, so I sent the picture off to Ken, to see what he thinks.  At this point, I’m not counting it as anything, but perhaps that will change, when I hear from the expert.  I think it is one of two species, either one of which will add to my trip list, but we will see.

 

A little later, I saw a second bird and got an even worse picture, but it does show the pattern and some color on the bird.  I also emailed this picture to Ken, and I’m awaiting his opinion.

 

So, I moved on from there, and I stopped next at Mac’s Truck Stop, about 20 km south of Mackay.  I read in a Mackay birding brochure that Bar-breasted Honeyeaters nest in the trees behind the truck stop, so I stopped and took a look.  I got no sniff of the honeyeaters, despite playing their call, but I did get some pictures of a Blue-faced Honeyeater.  I have been wanting a picture of that species, and the ones today were not great, but here is one of them, anyway.

 

 

Well, I had two pictures and was going to show only the better one, but neither one is very good, so I’ll just show them both.  I’ll keep trying for a better picture.  This was a tough situation because of the strong backlighting.

 

I had stopped in Sarina, a little before Mac’s Truck Stop, and had gotten a couple of meat pies from a bakery there.  I ate them as I drove, after I turned off the main highway to head toward the mountains, where I’m staying tonight.  I stopped at the Woolworths in Walkerston and replenished my grocery supply a little, and headed west toward the mountains.  There had been cane trains all day, and here is a picture of one.

They are narrow gauge trains that haul the sugar cane to the processing plants.  Each of those cars is full of sugar cane, freshly harvested.  This was Saturday, but they were running today, so maybe it is a 7 day a week operation, I don’t know.  The processing plants were running full bore, too.

 

Here is a picture as I approached the big climb up the range to Eungella, where I am staying.  I think that Eungella is pronounced YOUNG’-gull-ah, with the accent on the first syllable.

 

It was like I was driving up a box canyon, as there didn’t appear to be any way out.  The way out turned out to be a very steep climb right up the side of the mountains.  When I got to the top, there was a view point, and I got this picture, looking back toward where I had just come from.

 

I found my new home away from home, a little cabin sitting on the edge of the cliffs.  Here is a picture of it.

 

It’s really modern and new seeming, and has everything I need.  Here is a picture of the little kitchenette.  To my left, out of the picture, is a couch.

 

The fridge had ice already made, and the oven you see is a combo convection oven and microwave.  That is a two burner stove top on the far end of the counter.  All the dishes and pans I will need are in the cupboards.

 

Here is a picture of the bedroom, with its veranda.

 

And here is the view from the veranda.

 

It is a really great place, right up there with the best places I have stayed on the trip.

 

It had been in the mid-90’s F down in the valley, before I started up the hill, but up here at the cabin, at an elevation of about 2400 feet, it was mid-80’s.  It has cooled down dramatically since then, and I expect it will get pretty cold tonight.

 

So, I got my groceries stowed and my stuff moved in, and I set out to look for the bird I came up here to see, a honeyeater species that has a very restricted range.  I left the cabin at about 2 PM, for the half hour drive to the site where I was supposed to look for the bird.  The drive was very pretty, on mostly unpaved roads.  They were well graded and smooth, though, and I could go 25 to 40 mph, depending on the curves.  I had about 12 miles to drive.  It wasn’t exactly flat up on top, and I was gradually climbing all the time, to an elevation over 3200 feet eventually, but there were farms and houses all along.  Here is a picture of what it looks like “up top”.

 

I found my way to the site for the bird, and I parked my car and started to look.  The bird is supposedly responsive to playback, so I played the call from time to time, as I walked up and down the road.  Eventually, I realized I hadn’t’ gone quite far enough, so I walked a few hundred yards up the road to the entrance to the national park.  Then I walked down the track into the rainforest.  Here is a picture of that part of the walk.

 

I saw a male Golden Whistler, but no other birds.  Time was moving on, so I decided to throw in the towel and head back to the car.  As I came out of the national park, back to the pastures and more open country, I thought I got a response to the calls I was playing.  I listened and looked, and I saw a bird that seemed to be approaching.  It approached in stages, and I saw it a couple of times, but never got a good look at it.  It also seemed to answer my calls from time to time.  Eventually, it popped up about 25 feet away, and I got a clear binocular view of it for 4 or 5 seconds.  That may not sound like much, but a 4 or 5 second binocular view of a bird in profile, at 25 feet, is outstanding.  It was a EUNGELLA HONEYEATER (lifer) for sure.  The bird has distinctive facial markings, and I saw them all very clearly.  I would have loved a picture, but it didn’t stick around.

 

As I walked back to my car, I got this picture of a Pied Currawong, a bird I like for some reason.  They have white patches on their wings, and look striking when they fly.

 

I had spent about an hour on my search for the Eungella Honeyeater, and it took me another half hour to get back to the cabin, so I got back a little after four.  All the way back, I was exulting because I had actually found the bird.  I hadn’t had any idea how to assess my chances of seeing it, but I had it in my spreadsheet at 50% probability, reflecting the fact I had no idea what my chances were.  It is a great bird to add to my Australian list.

 

While I was gone, the temperature here at the cabin had dropped to the mid-70’s, and it has continued to cool.  It is cloudy and looks and feels to me like we could have showers tonight.

 

I have great internet access here, and I didn’t know if I would or not.  It turns out that the local cell tower is only about 150 feet away from my cabin, so I have a great mobile signal, and I am using my phone to get access for my laptop.  That sure has worked out well on the trip.

 

So, I am counting two species for today, and I might change that if Ken comes back and tells me I saw something else new in the cane fields.  With those two, I am now at 278 species, of which 24 are lifers.  Today was really fun.  I saw several places I hadn’t seen before, I avoided getting skunked, and then I got the Eungella Honeyeater.  It is a real bonus to have this great little cabin to spend the night in, too.  I have to think about whether I have an extra 30 or 40 minutes tomorrow, to drive the 3 or 4 miles to where you can supposedly see platypus.  Early morning is best, and I have been getting up early, so I could head out early, and then come back here to pack up and go.  I have to look at the possibilities for tomorrow.

 

Tomorrow I need to drive down the range and north to Townsville.  That is supposed to take me about five hours, not counting any stops or delays.  That is the last long drive of the trip.  After that, I only drive for one to two hours a day, and I will like that.  I have three nights in Townsville planned, and I have arrangements to bird with a Townsville birder on Tuesday.  It will be nice to stay in one place for three nights, too.  I have a couple of places to stop to look for birds, as I approach Townsville, so I’m hoping to avoid getting skunked again tomorrow.  We will see.  I’ve gotten through the worst stretch, where I thought I would probably get skunked, so we’ll see how I do when I get to the part I thought would be easy.