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Warning: the following may come very close to constituting an
advertisement, but I would like to say that I have no pecuniary interest in
Kingfisher Park at Julatten, I just think its a top spot.
There may be places, even within the local area, that have better birding (for
instance I have yet to visit places like Cassowary House) but there is something
about Julatten that feels just right. Part of it is the surrounds- even though
it is a dry year up there as well, the grounds still seem lush and green and
peaceful.
But mainly its the birds. It may be a bit dudish, but there is
something wonderful about seeing so many grouse rainforest species in such
comfortable surrounds, rather than clambering through precipitous rainforest
ridges, battling your way through Stinging Trees and spiky Wait-a-while Vines
for an unsatisfactory partial glimpse of a bird skulking in the
gloom.
Not that I didn't do that over the four days I was based
at Julatten, with several trips up Mt. Lewis to chase after the harder to
see high altitude species. On the first day I added four such species:
Mountain Thornbill, Atherton Scrub-wren, Bridled Honeyeater and
Golden Bowerbird as well as Topknot
Pigeon - a bird I should have seen well before this.
Yet again the male Golden Bowerbird managed to elude
me. And though I'm sure the females are very nice in their own right, with a
great personality, a fine sense of humour and a unique inner beauty, they're
just nowhere near as sexy as the brilliant males. I did manage to find a female
on a nest hidden deep in a roadside embankment, but do you think I could fine
the male's bower which is a ruddy great structure festooned with moss, lichen
and flowers? Of course not.
Unfortunately both Blue-faced Parrot Finch and Red-necked
Crake weren't too be found. The Crake is only coming down to Kingfisher Park
after rains and the Parrot Finch, often hard to find at this time of year,
is currently completely absent from Mt. Lewis because the local Parks people
sprayed the clearing where they most often congregate with herbicide to get rid
of the lantana. It worked- the lantana is gone, but so are all the grasses the
birds fed on. When asked whether they knew this was renowned spot for Blue-faced
Parrot Finch, the Rangers responded with astonishment. They are now working on a
management plan. A case of closing the aviary gate after the finch has
bolted.
That night I joined the Kingfisher Park folks on their
spotlight walk. Well worth the twenty bucks as we saw the juvenile
Lesser Sooty Owl almost fully fledged, come out of its hollow
and fly off a minute later- they had timed it to perfection. And if that wasn't
good enough, then came the mammals: Long-nosed Bandicoot; Spectacled Fruit-Bat;
Great White-tailed Rat; and even greater- two Striped Possums. These little
fellas would have to be the cutest of all Australia's marsupials. They both
sat feeding, seemingly unconcerned with our presence as they guzzled the sap
flowing from the trunks of the rainforest trees they had
tapped.
John Young, the renowned wildlife filmaker was at
Kingfisher Park to get footage of this very species, but his batteries had
been playing up and he'd stopped filming ten minutes before we saw the
little critters. Talking with him the next day, we decided we should make a
documentary entitled "You Should Have Been Here Yesterday" which would feature
shots of the perches that rare species had recently been sitting
on.
The next day I was up the mountain again and added the
remaining altitude species: Bower's Shrike-thrush, Fernwren,
Tooth-billed Bowerbird and Chowchilla. In order to get
the Bowerbird I had to clamber up a very steep ridge to a bower site, a small
cleared patch on the rainforest floor that the male was starting to decorate
rather simply with fresh green leaves. The bird was wary, but after sitting
quietly for a few minutes, it eventually flew in with a new leaf. Initially
startled, the bird flew behind a tree and rather like a child playing
"peek-a-boo" would peer around the side of the tree at me, its great thick
neck swivelling as far as it could so it could get a better view. Then it would
fly behind another tree and peer out in the same way, acting as if it
thought I couldn't see him. What a total dag of a bird.
On Chris Dahlberg's famous Daintree River cruise I failed
to see anything new for the year, but as usual it was a fantastic trip. You'd
think that cruising the same stretch of water nearly every day would drive
you to boredom, yet Chris seems to be as enthusiastic as he was when I did this
trip four years ago. We didn't see the Great-billed Heron that I was hoping for
(apparently another boat operator called the Mangrove Man got one that same
morning) but we made up for it with a roll call of 48 species including up
to four Little Kingfishers, a nesting Wompoo Fruit-Dove with its single white
egg sitting on a nest made up of about four twigs, hanging precariously over the
creek, and an Estuarine Crocodile sunning itself on the bank, creating much
excitement amongst both the passengers and even our guide who must have
seen hundreds in his time.
After Daintree I thought I would pop into Port Douglas to see
how 'real' people spent their holidays. At first I thought this taste of
civilsation was awright when the first people I encountered were a couple of
cute young things wandering the main street in their swimming (very) briefs, but
then the next couple I saw were a pair of rotund German tourists in similar
skimpy garb. It was like looking at a couple of overstuffed sausages bulging out
of their casings as they strolled up the main street.
I was just about to leave when I bumped into my God Brother
(son of my God parents) whom I hadn't seen for ten years. Turns out he and his
girlfriend had eloped and were getting married that day down by the foreshore.
So rather than go back to Julatten, I stayed on and acted as a witness for the
nuptials. Can't wait to speak to my Godmother. "It was a great wedding. Oh
that's right, you weren't there were you? I was. It was lovely."
My final morning at Julatten saw me finally catch up with
Yellow-eyed (Barred) Cuckoo-shrike in the drizzling rain.
Andrew at Kingfisher Park had been getting them every morning on his morning
bird walks but until this moment they had eluded me. Travelling south, I picked
up the White-browed Robin at Big Mitchell Creek. This is a very
underrated bird I reckon, and I always get a thrill finding one. No such luck
with Black-throated Finch but I did manage to rack up a total of 125 species as
I made my way through the Atherton Tableland. I missed out again on a
male Golden Bowerbird which was supposed to have a bower outside the ladies
toilets at The Crater National Park, though the looks I was getting as I lurked
around with binoculars meant I was probably very lucky to not get arrested.
The birding highlight turned out to be something of an
anti-climax, but for a while there I thought I had a female Papuan Harrier.
Turns out it was most probably an immature Spotted Harrier but this bird was
heavily streaked white on the head and neck, and had the yellow eye of an adult
bird, rather than the dull brown eye of the young bird it appeared to be. After
watching it with mounting excitement for about an hour I reluctantly decided it
must have been a Spotted on the basis of its flight pattern and long,
wedge-ended, barred tail. A disappointing result as this could have been bird
599 for the year.
By evening I was in the sugar town of Innisfail without adding
anything new. Could tomorrow be the day I break the magic 600
figure?
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