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Hi Laurie & Leanne Knight et al - If
anyone is yearning to see scrub turkeys & mounds try Lamington National Park
- the Binna Burra side - on the Main Border Track - so-called as it straddles
QLD/NSW border for some way - take the right hand track there are two
mounds one on the left hand side only 15-20 metres in and the other on the
right half a klm further on. They're was also one on the left hand
track but that had not been used for some time. We were
told they will use the same mound for 12 years or so if not endangered
in any way - carpet pythons have a good go at the eggs but often retreat as
the bird scratches mulch into its eyes.
We used a very old disused & flattened
mound once to rebuild an old track (on Binna Burra land, not Nat.
Park) and found it to be really beaut. friable,
rich, delicately scented & excellent for the purpose (would have loved some
for our garden!)
Scrub turkeys there are used to humans but
certainly not 'eating out of the hand' - they will follow you up a track for
kilometers with the vain hope of food & you sometimes have them running in
front of you just as if the track was built for them. They are characters
of the rainforest some with definite personalities.
Lamington NP is highly recommended - the Binna
Burra side is more diverse in flora & birds - from rainforest (cat
birds etc.), wet sclerophyll (scrub wrens etc.), montane heath (honeyeaters),
& boxbrush, casaurina & treefern open areas. The O'Reilly's side
has excellent rainforest birds but little else for the twitcher.
Sarah Knight
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