A few days birding with Chris Corben around Kenilworth and Cooloola in
south-east Queensland over the Christmas break recalled just how excellent a
birding region this is.
In the scrub about Kenilworth Bluff were a lewin?s rail, pairs of glossy
black cockatoos and grey goshawks, and a yellow-eyed cuckoo-shrike. On a
privately owned typha swamp nearby was a superb female painted snipe. Here
too were at least four spotless crakes, several little grassbirds and a
peregrine.
On Cooloola?s Noosa Plain, another lewin?s rail was calling. Two ground
parrots were flushed and 20+ took part in the species? hauntingly melodious
dusk chorus, to be upstaged marginally by a grass owl sweeping over the
heath. Presumed southern emu-wrens skulked in the rushes and a brush
bronzewing (both very rare in Queensland) crossed the road en route to
Inskip Point, where platelets in the coastal dunes were numerous but their
makers, the black-breasted button-quail, did not make a show.
Back in Kenilworth the next day, at Little Yabba Creek, a pair of
button-quail finally did show, at exactly the same spot I first found them
20+ years ago. Here too were dusky honeyeater, white-eared monarch and more
yellow-eyed cuckoo-shrikes, which put in another appearance at nearby Imbil.
Rose-crowned fruit-doves were numerous throughout.
In the higher altitude forests of the Conondale Range were breeding rose
robins (rare in Queensland in summer) and New Holland honeyeaters (another
Sunshine State rarity). Dusk brought excellent views of an owlet-nightjar
and a female and very vocal marbled frogmouth, which had been radio-tagged
by State Government researchers in 1993; both the tag and the frogmouth,
dubbed marbella, were in fine form. Sooty owls were calling, as were
yellow-bellied and sugar gliders.
Mammals elsewhere included a squirrel glider on Kenilworth Bluff and
black-striped wallabies near Imbil.
Greg Roberts
wk 61 07 33081147
fax 61 07 33081159
c/ John Fairfax,
PO Box 7103,
Riverside Centre. 4001. Qld.
Australia
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