March Madness

Have had a very busy start to March with so many highlights - its always nice when you have a mix of clients, those who have never been birding in Australia before and those who have specific targets that they have failed to find in previous trips. As the autumn develops some species are definitely becoming harder to find and conversely others seem to be easier.
Here is a selection of the high points from the last few tours.

Golden Bowerbird is one of the Wet Tropics most sort after endemics

although the male is still occasionally tending his bower he is no longer reliably there as he spends more time away from it than he does in September - February the key season for him.

Satin Bowerbirds on the other hand seem to be easier to find as there are large groups of 20+ female types roaming the forest feeding on fruiting trees. In early February we were lucky enough to find this female on her nest

picture by Patrick de Geest
Although the nest is now no longer active (hopefully because they have fledged) it was a real privilege to be able to watch her.

One of the less spectacular endemics is the Mountain Thornbill - this has a very restricted range and can at times be hard to find but recently they have been very obvious in the right habitat, occasionally allowing decent photos to be taken

picture by Patrick de Geest

Another one of the slightly less colourful endemics that is more often heard than seen well is the Bower's Shrike-Thrush. Again the last couple of weeks we have seen some very showy individuals

picture by Patrick de Geest

One of the species that I am frequently asked to find is Eastern Crested Shrike-Tit. This has a very restricted range in Far North Queensland and so far I have been exceptionally lucky and found it for all my clients who have asked for it - and in the case of Paul from New Zealand he had tried seven times and was starting to think that they did not exist. Well much to his relief (let alone his wifes) we found a family party with the adults feeding three fledged young

This poor shot shows the male - identifiable by his black bib.

We have also been lucky in finding some very unexpected species. The biggest surprise has been a group of up to six Dusky Woodswallows that stayed in one area for about three weeks, these are not a common species in FNQ.

This very bad picture does clearly show one of the diagnostic features of this species - the white leading edge to the wing.

It has not all been about the birds either. We have had an amazing run of Tree Kangaroo sightings

the most spectacular being of a an adult with a joey who was having difficulties getting down from the top of a tree, unfortunately whilst the views were great through binoculars it was just too distant for my camera!

Another perennial favourite with clients is the Boyds Forest Dragon

this very attractive lizard is not particularly rare just exceedingly good at hiding so it always a thrill to find them in the rainforest.

As March draws to an end and autumn sets in it will be fascinating to see what we find over the next few weeks. This weekend there is the potential for a storm or two which may blow a few seabirds in so watch this space

I'm back...

My apologies for the complete silence on the blog for the last few months.  Have been busy with a range of things and lost my password etc...
Anyway all back to normal now.
This year has started off slowly but is developing quite nicely - I am now fully booked for September so if you were planning to book me you will have to try for August or October!
Have a couple of tours booked over then next ten days so will update the blog then but in the mean time here are a few highlights so far this year

 

 Golden Bowerbird

 although the breeding season is winding down and he has started to moult he is always a great bird to see

 Satin Bowerbird - picture by Patrick de Geest

 an unexpected find this female Satin was quite happy on her nest in a very public area.

Black-faced Monarch - picture Patrick de Geest

another nest in a very open location, Great to watch the nest develop and then watch the adults feeding the young

Bush Stone-Curlew

Eastern Spinebill

Northern Barred Frog

Boyd's Forest Dragon

Northern Leaf-tailed Gecko

So if these have wetted your appetite drop me an e-mail and we will see what we can find for you!

Busy week, Bowers, Rifles and Night Parrots Pictures.....

We have had a very varied and busy schedule this week giving Jaap our Dutch client an introduction into the birds of North Queensland. Inevitably there were some things that just would not behave but on the whole we had a superb views of most of our target species.
One of the notable features was the sheer number of Bowerbirds that we both heard and saw; we had great views of all five species that you can find in this part of Queensland; in most cases multiple sightings - five Great Bowerbirds around a bower, 14+ Satin Bowerbirds feeding in a couple of trees, Tooth-billed Bowerbirds in virtually every suitable pocket of habitat and the seemingly ever reliable male Golden Bowerbird

singing Tooth-billed Bowerbird by Andy MacDougall.

male Golden Bowerbird.
We were also incredibly lucky with displaying Victoria's Riflebird.  We found three adult males in full display and several immatures trying to strut their stuff - the adult males though were having none of it and would drive off the young upstarts

We visited both the Northern and Southern Tablelands taking in a great range of habitat types from the Tropical Rainforests through to open Savanah Woodland.
Here are a selection of the highlights:

This is a very poor shot of an Atherton Scrubwren - this wet Tropics endemic can be exceedingly difficult to get prolonged views of as it tends to bounce around all over the place, rarely stopping. We were exceptionally lucky when we found a group of three or four birds that were more interested in feeding an gathering nest materials giving us great views, unfortunately they were in a dark bit of the forest and my camera struggled to compensate!

This Pied Monarch was on its nest and reasonably tolerant of us but again it was in a dark little corner...

The Australian Bustards were much harder to see than sometimes possibly due to the extreme temperatures - the thermometre in the van peaked at 46.5 at one point!

Even that iconic Australian Outback bird the Emu seemed to be struggling in the heat - well this males two chicks were certainly panting as they walked past.

There are still plenty of waterfowl around - including Cotton Pygmy Geese, Freckled Duck and Pink-eared Duck.

Wetland birds were turning up anywhere that they could find open water

this very obliging Latham's Snipe was feeding in the irrigation channel beside a sugar cane crop

It wasn't just the forest specialities that were in nesting mode

this Tawny Frogmouth was completely at ease on its rather pathetic excuse for a nest!

The most unexpected encounter though was with John Young the naturalist who has recently rediscovered the Night Parrot. the Night Parrot is probably the rarest of all Australian birds with very few accepted and documented records of live birds. We were attempting to find Crested Shrike-tit for Jaap when two birders walked out of the bush - John Young and a friend. John was very generous with both his time and knowledge and showed us where a pair of Shrike-tit were nest building..

whilst waiting for birds to re-appear the conversation naturally turned to his discovery and much to our delight he offered to show us some of his footage, an offer we were very happy to accept.

here is his collection of Night Parrot feathers.
He has taken over 600 images of this secretive and seemingly sedentary bird and he showed us several as well as his astonishing high quality video footage of the parrot hopping through the spinifex scrub. There has been talk on the web about the veracity of John's sightings but having seen just a small proportion of the footage John has there can be absolutely no doubt - once he has sorted all the issues relating to this astonishing find John has said that more details will be published, something to truly look forward to.
Many thanks to John for sparing the time to show us some of his work.

Short Notice Tours

On Monday 8th we had an enquiry to see if we were available for a tour the next day - luckily we were as we never like to let clients down - and so 0515 on Tuesday morning found us picking up Stephen and Barbara from their hotel at the Marina.
They are visiting Australia from Canada and had a few days based in Cairns before flying back down south to Melbourne.From our e-mail conversation whilst we were sorting out the booking it was clear that their main targets were anything that they had not seen around Brisbane. This meant only one thing - a tour around the key sites on the Southern Tablelands targeting not the Wet Tropic endemics and any other goodies we could find.
The day was a great success with eleven of the twelve endemics seen really well - the twelfth Macleay's Honeyeater we heard but it never showed itself. In total we recorded over 100 species many of which were ticks for our guests, it is great to take birders out and help them find new species!
Here are a few of the days highlights....

Any day that you see Southern Cassowary is going to be a good day!

The male Golden Bowerbird is always a favourite - we also saw several Tooth-billed and Satin Bowerbirds

Pied Monarch are very good at hiding so it was great to be able to watch one feeding as it crawled up a tree.

This male Rufous Whistler very obligingly sat and sang at eye level, unfortunately he was always in deep shade.

There were still many Pink-eared Ducks in the area, many of them were feeding in these curious circles. This presumably increases feeding efficiency.

All in all a very productive and enjoyable days birding.

I briefly met up with Stephen and Barbara on Cairns esplanade on Wednesday, apart from a nice selection of waders we also found a very obliging Mangrove Robin

Its not just birds....

Although we specialise in birding with our clients Australia is such a rich Continent from a wildlife point of view that it is impossible not to be captivated by the diversity and spectacle of other wildlife on offer.
Be it large in the shape of the iconic Australian mammal the Kangaroo:
Eastern Grey's

Euro

Agile Wallaby with joey

Swamp Wallaby

Mareeba Rock Wallaby

Lumholtz's Tree Kangaroo (picture by Patrick De Geest)

....or less cuddly
Green Tree Snake

Lace Monitor

Tommy Round-head

...or the stunningly beautiful butterflies
Blue-banded Eggfly

Cairns Birdwing

...the weird fish
Common Lionfish

 
....the bewildering array of plants
  Dendrobium nindii orchid

 Elkhorn or Staghorn Fern

Maniltoa lenticellata

...or the surprise when you are scanning the herons on the opposite bank of a river and you see one of these

we have something to fascinate and amaze you so why not join us.....