Last Sunday I said "What a great day", this Sunday, it's "What a great
week!" I've been able to get out for a bit of birding most days since my
last posting, with a resulting list of 206 species around Abberton and the
Lockyer Valley generally for the week, including -
The Painted Snipe flock at Seven Mile Lagoon. I've been back a few times
now, and there are still 19 or 20 birds around, sometimes gathered together
in a compact group, sometimes broken into two or more groups (families?)
maybe 100 metres apart. The full plumaged female count remains at four;
A huge Black Falcon harassing Black Kites;
Australian Spotted Crake in three locations, as well as Baillon's and
Spotless;
Curlew Sandpiper, Red-necked Stint, Sharp-tailed Sandpiper and Marsh
Sandpiper at Lake Dyer;
Tawny Frogmouths on the nest at two locations;
Little Bronze-cuckoo daily at Abberton;
Two Channel-billed Cuckoos have discovered the mulberry tree on the creek
bank opposite the house. Once it is in full fruit, they'll be back there in
numbers;
White-throated Nightjar and Owlet Nightjar on a property adjacent to Mt
Mistake;
Noisy Pitta in the same place, as well as at Ravensbourne NP;
Crested Shrike-tits in two locations;
Black-faced Monarch, Spectacled Monarch, Leaden and Restless Flycatchers are
all back on the Toowoomba Range escarpment, all singing and courting;
Ground Cuckoo-shrike nesting, also present at three other locations;
White-breasted Woodswallows around the valley, Masked Woodswallows and
White-browed Woodswallows in flocks (with a few White-breasted thrown in),
occasional Dusky Woodswallows and one Black-faced Woodswallow in a tree at
Abberton;
Paradise Riflebirds at Ravensbourne. Also up at the Bunyas (not in the
Lockyer Valley, but just a day-trip from here);
The Plum-headed Finch roost at Abberton continues, with up to three hundred
birds arriving some evenings. They drop into nearby trees and shrubs in
groups of twenty or forty or so, chattering all the while, then pose against
the late-afternoon sky, before climbing up again into the air to drop
finally into the communal comfort of a solitary patch of cane-grass which
has developed close to the creek-bank, presumably from a flood-deposited
remnant that I really should have got rid of as soon as I saw it. Still, my
tardiness has led to this current exciting afternoon ritual of the
plumheads - in the same way that leaving the native tobaccos that most
gardeners pull out has allowed bowerbirds, King-parrots and Brown Cuckoo
doves to feast on the clumps of yellow berries that it produces.
Russet-tailed Thrush at Ravensbourne, Bassian at the Bunyas;
And, the Bush Stone-curlew who has been hanging out with Masked Lapwings in
Toowoomba's light-industrial west for maybe a year now.
Light rain here yesterday evening seemed to bring out the frogs and mammals
around the house. At one time from the verandah, we were watching an echidna
who was engrossed in removed some grub or other from deep under the lawn -
the scars are clearly there this-morning, while a Northern Brown Bandicoot
scuffled around not far away, and a Brush-tailed Possum watched from a low
branch of an adjacent tree with a juvenile clinging to her back.
Bill Jolly
"Abberton",
Lockyer Valley, Queensland.
Visit our website at http://www.abberton.org
Email:
Ph: (+61) 7 4697 6111 Fax: (+61) 7 4697 6056
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