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Thursday, 24 October, 2013

 

Before I get into today’s report, I wanted to mention the fires around Sydney.  They must be on the news in the US, because several people have asked me whether they will affect me.  Sydney is where I started my trip, four and a half weeks ago, and it is about 800 or 900 miles south of where I am now, so the fires have not affected me.  I see that one of the places I birded was burned out, and a couple of other places I drove through have been burned.  The last I knew, the fires were still out of control.  I haven't turned on a TV for over three weeks, though, so you probably know more about the fires than I do.

 

Moving on to today, I didn’t get my full 8 hours of sleep last night, but I slept fairly well for about 7 hours.  I was up just before 5, and I was out of my room by about 7:10.  My Townsville mate, Ian, had arranged for me to meet Tony Ashton in the parking lot at Tyto Wetlands, and we did connect there.  Tony is the local expert on Tyto.  I knew by then that Ian and two of his mates were on their way, so Tony and I chatted, and our conversation mostly centered around me asking him about particular species I wanted to see.  The plan was for Ian and his two mates, Norm and Gil, to meet me at the Tyto parking lot and take me to Mungalla Station, a former cattle property that has been purchased by an aboriginal group.  Tony has been birding there recently, and I picked his brain about the species I wanted to see there that he had seen recently.  Ian and his mates showed up about 7:35, having gotten away a little early and made good time.  Here is a picture of Gil, Ian, Tony, and Norm, conferring in the parking lot at Tyto Wetlands.

 

Norm rode with me, and we drove out to the property.  We parked at the homestead, which is what Aussies call the main house on a station (ranch), where the squatter (rancher) lived.  In the US, squatters were people who just settled onto land they had no right to, but in Australia, that was the name they gave to the people who got huge land grants from the government.  The squatters became the upper class of the outback areas.  Anyway, here is a picture of the homestead at Mungalla Station.

 

Here are a couple of pictures to give you an idea of the habitat there.  These were taken from a point just to the right of that last picture.

 

 

You should know that I’m now in the part of the country where they don’t talk about summer, winter, spring or autumn, and there are just two seasons – the Dry and the Wet.  We are near the end of the Dry now, and in November or maybe December, the Wet will return.  It rains some during the Dry, but in the Wet it rains every day, I gather.  They have floods every year in this part of the country, and Mungalla would be almost covered in water at times in the Wet.  In most years, I gather there would be islands, but in some years, almost all water.  I was told that it is drying out fast, and the guys I was with told me that there was much more water a few weeks ago, and many more birds then as a result.

 

We drove out onto the station land, looking for birds.  The property was bought fairly recently by a group of aboriginals, as I think I mentioned, and they let people put their cattle on the land, so there were a lot of cows around.  We drove off across the fields, sometimes on dirt tracks, and sometimes just overland in Ian’s four wheel drive truck.  I soon picked up my first trip bird for the day, AUSTRALIAN PRATINCOLE.  I had only seen this species once before, in 2008, and I only had it at 20% in my spreadsheet, as it is usually a bird that is seen across the Great Dividing Range “out west”.  I don’t know why they are at Mungalla, but we saw a couple of dozen today, I would say, spread across the fields (paddocks to the Aussies).  Here is a picture of one.

 

And here is a picture showing the front of the bird.

 

There is another species of pratincole seen here sometimes, the Oriental Pratincole, but they haven’t shown up this year yet.  They don’t have that band across their fronts like this one does, and there are other differences, too.  One of the interesting things today for me was that no one birded this property until a year ago, and so a lot of things are still being learned about it.  I felt like I was being let in on the ground floor of a brand new birding site.

 

Here is another picture of Mungalla.  I’m showing more pictures of the places I was today than usual, and I’m not sure why, but I want to remember them.

 

There were water birds out there, and I picked up my lifer for the day, PIED HERON (lifer), there.  It is a small heron, and I had excellent scope views of it, although it was much too far away for pictures.  There were some shorebirds there, including Red-necked Stints, Sharp-tailed Sandpipers, and one godwit, but there was also one that was different from all of those.  We eventually decided that it was a MARSH SANDPIPER, a bird I had only had at 50% in my spreadsheet.  Later we saw another one, and here is a distant picture of the second one.

 

We drove through a field where they had seen Stubble Quail in the past, which would have been a great one for me, but we never saw any, despite trying both ways, twice.  It was time for morning tea by then, so we stopped in the shade near the old cattle yards, and had our tea.  Here is a picture of a fig tree that has taken over the corner of a fence, as it put down new trunks over the years.

 

Here is a picture I shot with one hand, while we were eating.  From left to right, that is Norm, Ian, and Gil.

 

There were a couple of interesting birds there, including a nesting LARGE-BILLED GERYGONE.  I had wanted to see that species when I was with an Aussie birder, to help me identify it, and the nest helped that a lot.  I got good looks at it, though, and I might have been able to work it out on my own, knowing the birds that have been reported there.

 

The other one that they had seen there before was one I wanted, and eventually I got great looks at a male SHINING FLYCATCHER.  It is a black bird with a blue sheen when the light hits it right.  I even got some pictures, and one of them came out great, I think.  It is always hard to get a picture of a black bird that shows the feathers and the eye, and this time I succeeded, by my standards.

 

From that point, I took this picture of some Magpie Geese.  They were probably the most numerous species out there today, but the guys tell me that there were many thousand more a few weeks ago, when there was more water.  Here is a small group of them

 

Here is a closeup.  They are surprisingly shy and it is hard to get close to them for a picture.

 

 

Here is another picture of the habitat.

 

We continued to drive around the property, and I got this picture of a Brolga.  I had seen this large crane species at the Townsville Common the other day, and I expect to see a lot more of them in the next couple of days, up on the Atherton Tablelands, but here is a picture of one of the two we saw today.

 

We stopped a couple more places and had a walk around, but I didn’t pick up anything new or get any pictures until this stop, where someone noticed a nest of a White-breasted Woodswallow.  Here is the bird settling on to the nest.

 

And here is one after it settled down.

 

Here is a picture I like of that particular stop.  The woodswallow nest was in the tree on the right.

 

We kept seeing Australian Pratincoles, and they are so photogenic that I kept taking pictures.  Here is the closest shot I got, I think.

 

We tried once more for the Stubble Quail, and while we didn’t see any, we did see this snake.

 

I was told it was a non-venomous Olive Python.

 

I also got one last picture at Mungalla, a Rainbow Bee-eater sitting on a fence wire.

 

They are very colorful, and I especially like the blue color of the base of the tail.

 

So, it was coming up on noon by then, and we had been driving around Mungalla for about four hours by then.  It was a really great opportunity for me to see this place that not many Aussies have birded yet.  Tony Ashton saw 107 species in a single day on the property a couple of weeks ago, and that signifies a damn good birding location.

 

I got back in my car and headed north, while Ian and his mates headed back to Townsville.  I didn’t really do much the rest of the day, and I settled into my new digs about 3 PM, after stopping at Woolies to replenish my food a little.  I got some lasagna for tonight, as that sounded good to me.  I’m in a place that calls itself a motel, but they have sort of individual units and I have a microwave and fridge, along with some utensils and crockery.  The air conditioning is pretty good, but it took hours to cool it down to about 70, which is where I like it for sleeping.  I didn’t mention the heat today, but it was about 90 again, and pretty humid.  I didn’t have to walk at all today, though, and there was a breeze, so it wasn’t too bad.  Maybe I’m adapting, or maybe that is just wishful thinking.

 

I stopped in Mission Beach tonight because this is the best place to see a Cassowary unless you go up into territory north of here where I don’t plan to go.  I had hopes, and I drove around a little, to see if I could see one, but I had no luck.  I asked at the motel office, and was told my best chance was to stop on my way out tomorrow at Lacey Creek and walk around.  I plan to do that and see if I can get lucky.  It is a longshot, though.  There are other birds I could see for my trip list there, though, so if it isn’t too hot and the mozzies and biting flies aren’t too bad, I will spend a little time there.

 

After that, I plan to drive up to the Atherton Tablelands.  That is at an elevation of a couple of thousand feet, I think, and it should be cooler and less humid up there.  I have booked a cabin in a caravan park up there, and plan to stay two nights.

 

So, I picked up another 5 species for my trip list today, and one of them was a lifer (the Pied Heron, in case you forgot and cared – the first is likely, the second quite unlikely).  That brings me to 314 species, of which 27 are lifers.  What a trip it is.  I’m still doing great, feeling wonderful, both physically (other than the heat) and emotionally.  I have heard enough from people at home, and I have been busy enough, that I have not suffered any homesickness yet.  I just keep on trucking, finding birds and seeing the country.  I know I say it too often, but I can’t help finishing by saying “What a life!”