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.....

Waterfowl

One of the features of local birding as the dry season progresses is the increase in both number and diversity of waterfowl. As the interior continues to dry out the ducks get pushed towards the coast and concentrated in areas of open water.
The resident species such as....
Pacific Black Duck

Green Pygmy Goose (picture by Patrick de Geest)

Gray Teal

Hardhead (picture by Patrick De Geest)

 Australian Wood Duck or Maned Duck

Radjah Shelduck - a recent colonist to the Cairns area

...are joined by several species that only occur here when water starts to become scarce inland.
There are three species that occur in good numbers each year
Magpie Goose

Plumed Whistling-Duck

Wandering Whistling-Duck

Another annual visitor usually in small numbers is the Pink-eared Duck

This year small numbers have turned up at a range of sites from March onwards with larger numbers at a couple of bigger wetland sites such as Hasties Swamp where well over 100 can be found feeding.
However the undoubted highlight this year has been the number of Freckled Duck that have arrived at Hasties Swamp. This is Australia's most threatened duck and there are only a handful of records from North Queensland, the first birds arrived back in March and there are now 14 birds there

There have also been a couple of records of Australian Shoveler in the region.
All in all an excellent winter for ducks and the dry is not over yet.....

North West Tablelands and beyond

As we are moving into spring and the dry in the interior continues to bite we headed off to try and find some dry country specialities that were being pushed East. It was ironic that on the trip we actually had pretty poor weather - strong winds and rain which made finding some of these specialities very difficult - coupled with the fact that the one river crossing we found with water in had a road crew carrying out repairs meant that birds were quite hard to find.
A few of the Melaleuca's were in flower and these certainly concentrated the Honeyeaters in particular - although it was still very hard work getting decent views of anything. Rather disappointingly we failed to find Banded Honeyeater but I think this was due in part to the viewing conditions. In addition where we did find shelter and birds the light conditions were too poor for photography. Trips like this though always throw up some goodies and this was no exception.
In one stream bed we found three Shining Bronze-Cuckoos feeding very actively

We also found a single Pallid Cuckoo but it was far to flighty and we were never able to get any pictures of it.

The one dry country migrant that we found in good numbers was the Diamond Dove. This diminutive dove is normally found further west in arid  or semi arid woodlands with the occasional bird pushed east as their habitat dries out. During the day in addition to several widely scattered individuals we also found one flock of over 100 birds

The flock was feeding beside the road and was very jumpy, but with patience we got some great views of this exceedingly attractive bird

One of the features of the pasture land in the N W Tablelands are the Australian Bustards. We are lucky in this region that our population seems to be stable and they are still a feature in our landscape but as you move south they become progressively scarcer due to among other things habitat loss and the introduction of intensive grazing.

Watching these magnificent birds is a highlight of any trip particularly if the males are displaying. At least two of the males that we found were "warming up" by puffing up their throat and neck feathers but I think it was just too cold and windy for them to get into full swing

Due to the weather there were fewer raptors on the wing than we had hoped for but it did give us the opportunity to get some brilliant views such as this Nankeen (or Australian) Kestrel

A very interesting trip to an area that holds huge potential, and one that we hope to repeat again soon