During last week, my wife and I stayed at Mt Warning Caravan Park. This
park is about 10 km from Murwillumbah in NE NSW and in the shadow of Mt
Warning. The trip was not meant to be a birding trip and my wife is not a
birder, but some birding was done.
I did not visit the Mt Warning National Park at all. Each morning and
afternoon, I went for an early morning and late afternoon walk (stroll) for
a kilometre in both directions along the road. This worked out at 4 km
twice a day, a reasonable amount of exercise. I also spent one morning
exploring some private land (with permission of the owner) near the caravan
park. Some days, I took my camera, some days my binoculars and on the odd
occasion, both. The caravan itself is surrounded by rainforest and contains
many flowering trees (exotic and native). I usually walked around the park
itself at least five times a day. The rest of the time was spent completely
relaxing, i.e. sleeping.
The vegetation was mainly rainforest and tall eucalypt forest with the odd
cleared area where the old farms had been situated. The creeks were not
running but many small water holes remained. Locals said it was the first
time in living memory that the creeks had stopped running. The Tweed River
was low but still running with large reaches of deep clear water. ( I did
see a lone platypus early one morning.)
The bird life was prolific but with a VERY limited range of species. It is
this lack of species that I want to talk about and see if anyone else has
had a similar experience. Considering the amount of time spent observing, I
find the results surprising.
I saw (and heard) only two corvus species - one Torressian Crow and one
Raven. Two magpies, one Grey Butcherbird and two Pied Butcherbirds. There
were NO Rainbow or Scaly-breasted Lorikeets - ONE Little Lorikeet in the
week. ONE Crimson Rosella and no other rosellas. Two King Parrots.
Honeyeaters were particularly scarce. I saw two or three Noisy Friarbirds
and heard one Scarlet Honeyeater. There were NO Brown Honeyeaters seen or
heard. Blue-faced, Lewins and Noisy Miners were there in the hundreds.
THAT is the total of honeyeaters. No Grey Shrike-Thrush was heard but one
was seen. One Varied Triller was heard but not seen.
A single Willie Wagtail (in a horse paddock) and one only Spectacled Monarch
was surprising with no Leaden, Black Faced, etc seen. Scrub wrens were
almost completely absent with none heard and only one Large-billed seen.
There were no thornbills in the upper branches but hundreds of Brown
Thornbills foraging down low. Even Fairy Wrens were scarce with one small
group of Red-backed and another small family of Superb Blue the only ones
seen in the week. Even robins went virtually unseen. One Eastern Yellow
was seen and one heard with two Pale Yellows seen.
I won't go on but I am sure you get the idea. Drongos were numerous,
pigeons prolific and the number of Logrunners surprised me.
The birding was great but limiting. I had a list of about 55 species for
the whole week.
The greatest surprise was the Spectacled Monarch. Not surprising in itself
but it was definitely a northern subspecies. How far south do they migrate?
Any explanations for the weird lack of common species is welcomed.
Terry Pacey
Birding-Aus is on the Web at
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