Dear Birders,
I have recently spent a few days (14th - 18th October) at the Hamilton Island
resort with my family. Before going I looked HI up in the archives and was
lucky to find a bit of information - thanks Peter Fuller (post dated 2004). I
agree with Peter, it's not a place to see birds, unless you are a fan of the
sulphur crested cockatoo!!! Cockatoos, ravens (or crows??) and currawongs are
all a huge problem there. An interesting little fact: they actually hire a
trained wedge-tailed eagle to fly over the resort for a couple of weeks to
'scare' these 'pests' back to their natural habitat so they don't create too
much havoc. The sulphur crested cockatoos actually enter the apartments from
the balcony and fly off with people's belongings. Has anyone heard of hiring
raptors to perform this sort of function? I asked "Is the eagle on the island
at the moment?" but the answer was "no". The two wedge-tailed eagles I saw were
therefore wild, and so I counted them on my list! They were circling the peaks
away from the resort so weren't much use in relocating the cockies. Time to
hire an eagle again!
We enjoyed observing a Brahminy Kite on several occasions - what a magnificent
bird, and lucky for me (I'm a beginner) easy to identify. We did get down to
the mangroves, but we didn't have much time - all we saw there were the
ubiquitous sunbirds. I did see a wader of some sort which I couldn't identify -
I put down whimbrel with a question mark. It was down on the beach at 6.30am.
Unfortunately the photo I took wasn't clear enough so I can't send it for more
expert eyes to look over it.
Anyway, here's my list in case anyone's interested (some overlap with Peter's
list):
Silver gulls, Australian Ravens or Torresian Crows (unsure which), pied
currawongs, swallows (two types, probably welcome and white-breasted
woodswallow), Brahminy kite, sunbirds, wedge-tailed eagles, Eastern Reef Egret
(dark morph), Laughing Kookaburras, Pacific Black Ducks, Southern Boobook
(landed on the balcony adjacent to our apartment), Rainbow Lorikeets, helmeted
friarbird, bush stone curlew, great cormorant, pied oystercatchers, ?whimbrel,
masked lapwing.
cheers,
Arwen
......................................... Arwen Blackwood Ximenes
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