I suppose I never take the time to share my favourite birding place with
others, and am attempting to redress that now. The Pumicestone Passage is
the shallow body of water which separates Bribie Island from the Queensland
mainland, about 50km north of Brisbane. It winds haphazardly and intimately
through mangrove forests for much of its 30km route. The mangroves are rich
with Mangrove Gerygones, Collared Kingfishers and Mangrove Honeyeaters.
Raptors occur in abundance - Whistling Kite, Osprey, Brahminy Kite and
White-bellied Sea-eagle.
I and others cover the various high tide wader roosts on a monthly basis
for the Queensland Wader Study Group. We also participate in low tide
feeding bank counts of waders.
Today was just heavenly. It was a low tide count day. Wader numbers were
well down on the feeding banks, only a total of approx 1500 birds over the
six monitored feeding sites.
Many of the birds have already moved north. However, we noticed that Terek
Sandpipers are still grouping up , getting ready to leave. When they go,
the lot will go all at once - I can't recall ever seeing Tereks during the
winter, though we get hundreds of many of the other wader species
overwintering in the Passage. Winter also attracts Black-winged Stilts and
White Ibis in their hundreds. The stilts love to gather on the eastern
banks of the Passage on winter afternoons, basking in the late warmth of
the sun. Towards sunset, Pied and Little Pied Cormorants turn favourite
west-facing mangroves into Pied Mangrove trees.
Most delightful today was the opportunity to watch a Jabiru on its stick
nest, high in a dead tree. I had always taken the nest to be that of an
Osprey. This is a well-shared nest. Last year the Osprey nested there, and
I am told that in 1997 the same nest was used by Peregrine Falcons. I well
recall the terror that a Peregrine used to strike in the flocks of waders
at the nearby roosts. I haven't seen one around the area for a year or so
now.
As our boat approached our berth, I had to laugh at a boat we were passing.
A life-sized statue of a Horned Owl, installed to deter birds from the boat
canopy, was surrounded by a couple of dozen loafing Silver Gulls.
Idyllic though it sounds, our major wader roost is destined for the chop.
When the canal development, which was approved many years ago, is
completed, The Dux Creek roost will be transformed into a beautiful,
sanitised, rock-walled canal and housing estate, where waders will find no
rest. That's progess, but how do we explain that to the birds?
Jill
Jill Dening
Sunshine Coast, Qld
26º 51' 65" 152º 56' 16"
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