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Tuesday, 22 October, 2013

 

Today was another amazing day in the land of Oz.  The theme lately seems to be nesting birds or birds with families.  Today continued that theme.

 

I was up at 4:40, after sleeping well.  I figured out that most likely the reason I slept lightly the last couple of nights before last night was because of the double strength iced coffee drinks I had made myself.  Duh!  I know I am sensitive to caffeine, which is why I use it when I need to stay awake to drive, and I should have realized it was affecting my sleep as well.  Anyway, with no coffee yesterday, and the half a sleeping pill I took last night, I slept well.

 

When I went to make my brekkie this morning, I discovered that my eggs had frozen.  My little fridge was set too cold, I guess.  I noticed that the plastic pitcher of water they had left in the fridge for me had frozen solid, too.  So, I cooked up some bacon and had a slice or two of cheese, and had my last Greek yogurt.  I needed a little more, so I drove down the road to McDonalds (called Macca’s by Aussies) and got a Sausage McMuffin with Egg to top off the tank.  I had checked online, and that particular Macca’s is open 24 hours, so arriving at 5:55 was no problem.

 

Ian picked me up at 6:30, and we headed south to Alligator Creek, the place I had stopped on Sunday.  On Sunday, it had been crowded with people, but on a Tuesday morning, it was empty.  We walked around and looked and listened for birds.  It was actually kind of slow, but we got some.  We heard a call and Ian told me it was a bird I wanted to see, so we looked for it.  While looking for it, we noticed a couple of DUSKY HONEYEATERS, and I had a bird for my list.  We found the calling bird, and I added BRUSH CUCKOO to my trip list.  It was too high in a tree for pictures, and it soon flew away.

 

As we were walking through the woods, Ian spotted a bird overhead.  It was a RUFOUS NIGHT-HERON, and I not only added it to my trip list, I got pictures.

 

Here is a picture of Alligator Creek.

 

The creek didn’t seem to be actually flowing today.  The water was leftover from the last rain, a couple of weeks ago, I think.

 

Here is a picture of the day use area at Alligator Creek.

 

The weather was interesting today.  It was sunny just then, as you can see, but it clouded over a lot, and we had sprinkles and showers all morning.

 

Next, I spotted a bird that flew in, and Ian never got onto it, but I had a great look at it, and I described what I saw.  Barring on the lower breast and stomach, dark gray above that to the mid-breast, yellow eye.  With that last, Ian identified it as a BARRED CUCKOO-SHRIKE, a “good” bird, I gather.  I looked in my field guide, and that was the bird all right.  I was very happy to add it to my list.  It was in a good position for a picture, but it flew on before I could get one.  I had only seen the species once before, and I had it at only 50% in my spreadsheet.

 

In the picnic area, I added YELLOW-SPOTTED HONEYEATER, a common bird, but one that looks very similar to another honeyeater species that lives north of here.  When I get up there, I will have to distinguish between this species and the other one by hearing the calls, I think.  The other one doesn’t live down here, though, so I could identify this one today easily.

 

I also got onto a WHITE-BROWED ROBIN, a bird we had heard both yesterday and today.  I was surprised how strong the markings on it were, and I hope to get a picture eventually.  There were a lot of Figbirds around, but I couldn’t get a picture of a male Figbird.  Here is a picture of a female, which looks very different from the male.

 

So, after an hour and a half or so, we left Aligator Creek and moved on to Horseshoe Lagoon, where I had stopped on Sunday and gotten the White-browed Crakes and Crimson Finches.  I was hoping for a lifer tern that shows up there, but we had no luck at all there.  We drove a lot of back roads, looking for Zitting Cisticola (very unlikely) and Horsfields Bushlark, but saw neither.  We stopped at one point for morning tea, and I had a snack from my lunch bag, while Ian made himself some tea or coffee.  At one point, I did get a picture I kind of like of a Fairy Martin, a member of the swallow family that is common here.

 

So, eventually we gave up on that area and moved back up to Townsville itself.  One of Ian’s mates has a pair of owls that are nesting on his property, which I gather is 5 or 10 acres.  The mate wasn’t home, but he had told Ian to go on in and take a look.  We found the nest tree, and looked around for the parents, at least one of which would be roosting nearby.  We found this beautiful BARKING OWL (lifer) sitting right out in the open.

 

Here it is from the back.

 

On my first five Aussie trips, I had seen exactly one owl species, total, and on this trip, I am now up to four owl species.  Amazing.  It is all due to local knowledge and help.  In a week or two or three, there will presumably be young owls in that area, too, like the fuzzy Rufous Owls we had seen yesterday.  Incidentally, Ian isn’t going to mention the fledgling Rufous Owls we saw yesterday to his local birding mates for a few weeks, so the young owls won’t be disturbed.  I was really lucky to be in on the discovery of them yesterday.  Birders are generally very protective of the birds they see, and they often don’t pass on details of sightings if it might disturb the birds.

 

Our next stop was at the home of another his mates, Norm.  Norm has a nesting pair of Tawny Frogmouths in his yard.  I had seen a Tawny Frogmouth briefly on the night of our big day on the Sunshine Coast, when we drove around with a spotlight.  Today I had much closer and longer looks, in the daytime.  Tawny Frogmouths build their nests on a branch, and the nests are really just a bundle of sticks.  The male sits on the nest during the day, and the female roosts nearby.  They are night birds, and at night, the male goes hunting and the female sits on the nest.  Here is a male Tawny Frogmouth sitting on the nest.

 

They are very strange looking birds, aren’t they?  At one point, the bird sort of stood up.

 

Then he looked down into the nest.  Ian and Norm reckon there is probably at least one nestling in there now.

 

After that, he settled back onto the nest and went back to sleep.

 

Norm pointed out the female in a nearby tree.  She is much smaller and lighter colored, with a rufous tinge to her head, I notice.

 

Ian had told me earlier that some Tawny Frogmouth females were kind of rufous colored.

 

So, it was past time for lunch by then, as far as I was concerned, so to continue the nesting theme, we went to the Townsville Palmetum, a botanical garden in town, where Ian knew of a nesting pair of Blue-winged Kookaburras.  We found the nest hole and ate our lunches at a bench near there in the shade.  Norm had come along as well.  You could sort of see two young birds in the nest hole.  This is the best picture I could get, and it does show one of the nestlings.

 

I hadn’t realized that the male and female Blue-winged Kookaburras were different, but I learned the difference today.  Yesterday I showed one with a very blue rump and tail.  That would have been a male.  Here is what the tail of a female looks like.

 

Here is the female at the nest hole.

 

Note the rufous colored tail feathers, with white tips.

 

On the way to the nesting hole, there were several trees that had Giant Fruit Bats roosting in them.  The Aussies usually call them Flying Foxes, as they have kind of a fox look to them.  Here are some of them, high in the trees, hanging upside down and wrapped in their wings.

 

I kind of like them, but if you didn’t like bats, you might get creeped out by them.  They are very destructive and people don’t them in general.  They make a mess with their droppings, and they end up killing the trees they roost in.  It is hard to tell the size from the picture, but they are probably a foot in length.  Here is the best I could do for a close up.

 

They figure big in the diet of the larger owls, like Powerful Owl and Rufous Owl.

 

So, after lunch, Ian dropped me back at my motel, although we did make two other stops on the way.  He knew of the bower of a Great Bowerbird that is right next to the road, so we stopped and I tried for pictures.  I have explained about bowerbirds and their bowers before, and I’m sure all my faithful readers have been paying close attention, so I won’t go into it again.  Here is a mediocre picture of a Great Bowerbird in front of his bower.

 

Our last stop was a shot at seeing a bird I needed for my trip list.  Ian knew of one that had a chick, so we drove by the location.  We saw a couple of them there, so we turned around and I got this picture of a BUSH STONE-CURLEW.

 

It is too bad about the barbed wire running across the picture.

 

There was another bird on the ground behind this one, and when it got up, a young one got up, too.  Neither of us had noticed the young one.  I got one family picture, to finish up the theme of the day, which was nesting birds and bird families, as I’m sure you remember.

 

I had never seen a young Bush Stone-curlew, so that was cool.  Earlier in the day, we had seen a pair of Masked Lapwings with two young ones, too, but I didn’t take the time to get a picture.  It was a real bird family and nesting day today.

 

Ian dropped me off at my motel at about 2 PM, and I went on down to the mouth of the Ross River, to look for some birds, including a tern that is supposedly rather common there.  I was hoping for shorebirds, too, as the tide was out, but most of the shorebirds were roosting across the river, too far to see and identify, even with a scope.  The side of the river that I was on is an off-leash dog beach, it seems, and there were people with their dogs out there, which doesn’t help bring in the birds.  I did see a very small tern, though, and I added LITTLE TERN to my trip list.  I might see them up in Cairns, but it is not guaranteed, so I was glad to add it today.

 

So, when all was said and done, I had added 9 more species to my trip list.  That seems like a really big number to me, at this point.  My original goal had been to see 300 species with 20 lifers among them, and after four weeks of my six week trip, I now have 303 species and 26 lifers.  That outstanding success is due to all the help I have had from my Aussie birder mates, and I thank you all, again.

 

So, now it is time to move on again, in the morning, after three nights here in Townsville.  I’m only going about an hour or so up the road, to Ingham.  I have a couple of places I might stop on the way, and there is a wetlands at Ingham, Tyto Wetlands, that has a wonderful bird list.  I hope to bird there tomorrow afternoon and again on Thursday morning.  Ian is trying to get in touch with a mate of his who lives there and goes to the Tyto Wetlands just about every day.  They call the guy Tyto Tony.  If he is available, he might show me some of the special birds there.  In any case, Ian and Norm, his mate I met today with the Tawny Frogmouths in his yard, plan to drive up to Ingham on Thursday morning and meet me.  They will then take me to Mungalla Station, a property owned by an aboriginal group that is just starting to become known as a birding destination.  They have seen some great birds there, and we will look for them on Thursday, if all goes well.  It is a tremendous opportunity for me, and I really hope it comes off.

 

I’m doing really well so far, and I’m feeling great, both physically and emotionally.  The trip is everything I had hoped it would be, and more.  The emails and instant messaging contact I have with people back in the States are what keep me going, and I want to thank everyone who has emailed me or made comments on Facebook.  I don’t know who is actually reading this stuff, so if you want to drop me a quick email to let me know you are out there, it would be appreciated.  I have two more weeks to go now.  I keep marveling at how I ever started this Aussie trip thing, and it is incredible to me that this is my sixth trip.  What a strange thing to do, and I really do enjoy it.

 

What a life!