A change of plan found Leanne and I doing a circuit in the Brindle Ck area of
the Border Ranges NP. You have to pay $6 for the privilege of driving through
the park, but at least there is the potential to see a ranger in the park on
the weekend.
Possibly because of the entrance fee, the fact it takes an extra half hour to
get there, the fact it is across the border, and the fact that there is no
commercial development [no tea houses, restaurants, wineries, souvenir shops
etc] the park is a lot quieter than its counterpart on the other side of the
Macpherson.
This means that you can go birding along the one-way road in the morning without
having to worry about cars [virtually no cars before mid-morning and you know
which they are coming].
We only heard the odd wompoo calling round the Brindle Ck carpark, and only saw
top knots, BC doves and WH pigeons [the latter doing a fair bit of calling].
While we saw top knots on quite a few occasions, we never saw more than a couple
in a group [normally we see them in groups of 6-12 noisily flying about in
circles].
I saw a downy looking bowerbird about a kay from the carpark - couldn't
determine its eye colour but it appeared to have a green back.
Further along the road, there were a pair of wedgies perched in a tree, and a
few needletails zipping around on the breeze [lovely fine day with good
visibility Mike] near the antarctic beech picnic ground. By then it was time
for a late morning tea and so we pulled out a thermos of freshly ground choclate
flavoured Dome coffee [Leanne bought the beans while she was in Albany]. John
Ewing [Never Never Safaris]
popped in [with a couple of European clients] and confirmed that the
international tourist market is well off the boil.
We then had a pleasant stroll down the track to Brindle Ck which is one of the
few creeks in the region to run through a nothofagus forest [very pleasant
walking]. We saw a few red crayfish in Brindle ck, which was interesting
because [to my knowledge] we were only one or two kays from the Lamington blue
crayfish watersheds. Does anyone know if the red and blue crayfish have been
found in the same creek, whether a blue crayfish has ever been found west of the
Lions Rd, and whether they exist to any significant extent south of the border?
We had lunch in a nice babbling section of the creek, where the ground was
covered in pale yellow wattle-like flowers. I'm not sure what sort of tree they
were from, but you don't expect to find a wattle in an upland rainforest.
As we were driving out, there were three white headed pigeons perched together
on the road shortly before the Tweed Lookout [great views from the Tweed
Pinnacle via Nightcap and Mt Warning round to the ocean]. They declined to move
until the car was only metres away. We also came across a creche of turkeys not
far from the Forest Tops camp ground. I guess the young turks that stay
together survive togther.
Regards, Laurie.
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