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Folks,
Just a quick note to thank collectively all those
who helped with information and in other ways in terms of our five week family
camping trip through NSW and southern Queensland. I'll be in touch with
people individually as soon as I can, once I've got all our lists sorted
out. We got home last Friday after a great trip with 265 bird species,
plus assorted amphibians, reptiles, mammals, orchids, scenery, culture and
various other entertainments. Personally I picked up 29 new ticks (plus
one scrub-tick - I guess there's a fly in every ointment), with highlights being
Paradise Riflebird, Noisy Pitta, Marbled (Plumed) Frogmouth, Little
Bronze-Cuckoo, Superb, Rose-crowned and Wompoo Fruit-Doves, White-headed Pigeon,
Pacific Baza, Black-breasted Buzzard and Hall's Babbler.
I would very much appreciate advice/ suggestions on
one identification problem. I saw three or four Ground-Thrushes at Binna
Burra (Lamington NP), but none well enough to confirm the visual field-marks
that separate Bassian from Russet-tailed. The birds certainly didn't look
conspicuously different from the Bassian Thrushes I've seen often enough in
Victoria. I heard no calls that sounded like Bassian to me, but heard,
just once, in the dawn chorus, a single call that sounded pretty close to the
"Peee-pooo" of the Russet-tailed. However, a bird-guide I met, who was
leading a group of American birders, said that most of the Ground Thrushes would
be Bassian, as Russet-tailed are very rare in Lamington NP, both at Binna Burra
and at O'Reillys. Naturally none of the birds I saw called while I was
watching, so I'm at a bit of a loss to know what to put on my list. Any
thoughts would be most welcome.
Regards,
Jack
Krohn
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