165) Coombabah and Terra Nora local (and a bit more of Sundown)

A very cooperative double-barred finch posing for us at Terranora. We've never seen a finch stay still for so long, but we're tending to think that he was rather stunned by Dirk's better-beamer and wasn't able to move after being "blinded by the light, revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night". Whoops! Got carried away, there...but speaking of which, have you ever actually looked at the lyrics for that song? Google it...I never knew what ol' Manfred Mann's Earth Band was really singing, and no wonder! But I digress....

Teenaged boys will be teenaged boys, no matter the species! There was much boxing and kicking going on, between these young kangaroos at Coombabah, jostling for testosterone-induced power-plays.

An Ozzie version of an LBB, but we're convinced this is a Mangrove Gerygone (that's pronounced Jer-i'-gah-nee, for you yanks) given that we were on a boardwalk surrounded by mangroves. Also known as "Peep warblers" these miniature (10 cm) birds have a delightfully sweet song, and you can see that this one is singing his little heart out.

Hmmm... Well, we're newbies at waders, but I think we're going with black-tailed Godwit on this one. Or wait, is it a bar-tailed Godwit? We finally see a wader at Coombaba, and so given the odds, it should be the most common bird said to be seen there, the bar-tailed. But as I mentioned, this is one of the few waders we've actually managed to see, so we'll take that as a cop-out.  Also, being surrounded by wader experts at the Uni, I *could* ask one of the pros...  I suppose we haven't been fastidiously checking the tide schedule before birding well enough to determine the best birding time, but that'll be next on the list of to-do things to learn more birds.  But we have to wait til they come back from having fun breeding in the Northern hemisphere.  We have the extra challenge here of getting most waders in non-breeding plumage.




A spangly Spangled Drongo with a brilliant red eye. Both the guys and the gals wear the spangley-bling in this species. The forked tail is a giveaway even in silhouette.

We found this nest on the ground at Sundown, the colourful feathers make us surmise that it is the nest of one of the lovely pale-headed or eastern rosellas. It's autumn here, now, so hopefully fledging was had by all before the nest came down.

We don't know who this nest belonged to, it also was on the ground near the rosella nest. It's only about two inches in diameter, but is a perfect little cup-shape.

 The traditional Easter Bilby! (bunnies are a big no-no here, given there big feral invasion mowing down every green-thing in sight and breeding like, well, rabbits...).  Is the knife for the bunnies or for the bilby?  Depends on what part of the country you're from...

 A final picture of the Turquoise Parrot at Sundown. Really amusing to watch them strutting along, grabbing grass stems and pushing them over to get at the seed heads.

164) Sundown

A highly exciting siting of Turquoise Parrots!  These beauties were high on our sought-after list for our weekend at Sundown National Park, located to the southwest of Brisbane, just north of the New South Wales border in the Granite Belt/New England area, known for its wine and apples.  The camping was very peaceful, only three other camping parties, and blissfully quiet except for the welcome sound of birdsong.  And a very noisy rutting deer of some type that had no peace, with much grunting and gnashing of teeth all night.  We thought it was a koala, boy were we wrong!





We finally saw a flock of seven turquoise parrots in the magic of the golden afternoon light, they feed quietly and inconspicuously on the ground, with the most decorous behaviour, unlike other raucous parrot-cousins.  Their colours were simply brilliant--I'd call them sapphire, emerald and topaz parrots, myself.














The restless flycatchers kept us in good company, snatching bugs from the mid-air, and milling around our campsite with very companionable "zzzting" noises.

The deep blue colours of the Azure kingfisher are somewhat astonishing when you see them darting about next to a still spot on the river.  We were happy to see two of these little guys (or guy and gal, hopefully!), chasing each other under a little overhanging bank next to a pool.









Another prize find, we spotted these plum-headed finches on the drive home, when we stopped along a road next to a vineyard near Girraween National Park, where we've had good birding luck before.  These birds cooperatively rested and gave us a great look.  It's the only time we've ever seen this species of finch, so they're not common near us.







Awww... there were dozens of kangaroos and wallabies lounging all about in the shade of the sparse trees in the grassy meadows.  The several little joeys we saw were adorable, we think these are Eastern Gray Kangaroos.  

One of our favourite birds are the grey-crowned babblers.  They are one of the social Aussie birds, living communally in a small family party.  They travel about together, noisily chattering and babbling to each other as they busily forage about.  They have a big stick nest that they all commune in together, and raise chicks cooperatively.














Another social bird, the Apostlebirds also live together in a family group, travelling about in a gregarious manner, chattering and wheezing noisily.  Very fun birds to see and watch.  We are not sure what this bunch was doing in the road but they provided a good look!








A "wow" sunset at Sunset!  Nancy searched unsuccessfully for platypus in the "Broadwater," while Dirk stayed in camp to photograph the pretty sky and rainbow. We didn't have much rain, though, it was quite dry, and seemed like it had been awhile since much rain had fallen, though we saw signs of the 2011 floods, with great piles of wooden debris many meters from the current riverbed, indicating the extent of the floods.  The now-dry driftwood made a fabulous campfire, with minimal effort involved in firewood collection.

We were quite excited to see a Frogmouth (they are NOT owls) during our night-spotting tour.  We thought he/she might be a marbled frogmouth given his reddish-orange eyeshine, but the habitat is not right (they live in subtropical rainforest) so he must be a more common tawny frogmouth.  During the daytime these birds are camoflauge artists extraordinaire, remarkably striking poses so that they resemble a broken branch, complete with mottled bark and lichens.








The man with a plan for the capturing the wily pardalote in action (see result, below).  Pardalotes are not known as being "cooperative" photographic subjects.  They are tiny and "highly caffienated" (Dirk's words).   They are stubborn in flitting about at high speed, HIGH up in the canopy, and being approximately the size of a eucalyptus leaf, they are often hidden from view, and difficult both to spot and to keep track of.  They do have a distinctive loud call for such a tiny bird, so sometimes we're able to pinpoint them by their calls (or at least find the tree they are in!).  But for such beautiful little gems, they're not nearly vain enough about wanting to get their picture taken!

(Monopod allows use of big glass and better-beamer with chicken arm!)

A juvenile spotted pardalote, not quite prime plumage, but still quite striking!


















Weekend bird list--60 spp
courtesy of E-Bird: http://www.ebird.org  check it out!
Little Black Cormorant                           
Little Pied Cormorant                           
White-faced Heron                           
Masked Lapwing                           
Peaceful Dove                           
Galah                           
Little Lorikeet                           
Crimson Rosella                           
Eastern Rosella                           
Pale-headed Rosella                           
Turquoise Parrot                           
Australian King-Parrot                           
Red-winged Parrot                           
Southern Boobook                           
Tawny Frogmouth                           
Azure Kingfisher                           
Laughing Kookaburra                           
White-throated Treecreeper                           
White-browed Treecreeper                           
Brown Treecreeper                           
Superb Fairywren                           
Variegated Fairywren                           
White-eared Honeyeater                           
White-plumed Honeyeater                           
Noisy Miner                           
Brown-headed Honeyeater                           
Blue-faced Honeyeater                           
Noisy Friarbird                           
Striped Honeyeater                           
Spotted Pardalote                           
Striated Pardalote                           
Speckled Warbler                           
Yellow Thornbill                           
Weebill                           
Gray-crowned Babbler                           
Black-faced Woodswallow                           
Dusky Woodswallow                           
Gray Butcherbird                           
Australasian Magpie                           
Pied Currawong                           
Black-faced Cuckoo-shrike                           
Golden Whistler                           
Rufous Whistler                           
Gray Shrike-Thrush                           
Willie-wagtail                           
Gray Fantail                           
Magpie-lark                           
Restless Flycatcher                           
Australian Raven                           
White-winged Chough                           
Apostlebird                           
Jacky-winter                           
Hooded Robin                           
Eastern Yellow Robin
Rose Robin                         
Mistletoebird                           
Diamond Firetail                           
Red-browed Firetail                           
Plum-headed Finch                           
Double-barred Finch

163) Brissie Birds

Well, this is not yet Brisbane - Dirk is seeing if he can actually hold a camera with a long lens! One of our hilarious Scaly Lorikeets out our back window.

When you get out early to birding sites, who ever walks first gets to clean out the webs - some of them are rather large!

















This is a more proper (and happier) place for a fruit dove to be, instead of lost in suburban Robina. We went to Pullen Pullen Reserve in Western Brissie, to find some new birds. These Rose-Crowned fruit doves obliged for us--flying in as we were sitting on a bench eating a snack. Maybe they smelled the banana bread... A few weeks ago we had a huge batch of bananas from one of the feral banana trees in our back yard. Since we couldn't eat them all, we put them where animals could get to them. We had some nice flying fox visitors, and also some brush-tailed possums. The bananas didn't last long!




We never tire of the fairy wrens, this one is obviously a red-backed fairy wren. Birds very aptly named! They bounce around the brush in little family groups, twittering to keep track of each other. Today we saw three species--Red-backed, Variegated, and Superb. All of them very splendid, as far as we're concerned.



We saw this Royal Spoonbill sweeping up his lunch at Eagleby Wetlands. We read that the other Yellow-billed Spoonbill's feathers can get rather dinghy white, but the Royals are always impeccably white.

















Rufous Whistler, not to be confused with the Golden Whistler. But both are quite pretty birds.
















And Dirk i happy to get out and about to see the birds again, and is pleased that his monopod allows him to use his camera again!

162.) New species - sadly

We have enjoyed "kitchen table birding" through our floor-to-ceiling windows over the deck. We have watched dozens of rambunctiously bathing Lorikeets, strutting Crested pigeons, singing Butcher birds, irregular Cockatoos, glaring Currawongs, and infrequent Rosellas (the King Parrots quit visiting when we quit growing tomatoes!)

But today I was introduced to a new species - the Superb Fruit Dove, when a juvenile slammed into our big window and broke its neck.

Distribution: The Superb Fruit-Dove is found along the coast and nearby ranges of Queensland and New South Wales south to Moruya.

Habitat: The Superb Fruit-Dove is found in rainforests, rainforest margins, mangroves, wooded stream-margins, and even isolated figs, lilly pillies and pittosporums.

Seasonal movements: The Superb Fruit-Dove may migrate to New Guinea in winter, but little is known of its movements, or the reasons for its sometimes southerly flights as far as Tasmania

Living with Us: Clearing of their forest habitat restricts access to fruit by Superb Fruit-Doves. They are listed as vulnerable in New South Wales. As they often move at night, many young birds fly into windows of buildings during their north-south movements.

Silbey (of bird guide fame) estimates that .9-1 Bill birds a year die due to window collisions (in the US. Many birds that survive impact die later of injuries. It is a difficult problem with no easy fix.

If you have big windows and things that go bump see:

http://www.birdwatchingdaily.com/~/~/link.aspx?_id=C0949ED365DD422688F6F57422D7B604&_z=z

http://birding.about.com/od/birdconservation/a/preventwindowcollisions.htm

We have had many collisions but this is the first immediate fatality. Sad....