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Took a 3 day visit to the Bunya Mountains earlier this week,
mostly for R &R, but did some birding as well.The Bunya's are 200 km west of
where we live on the Blackall Range and have a similair altitude and habitat,
though the Bunya's have more vine forest. Travelled via Kilcoy, Moore,
Blackbutt, Yarraman, Maidenwell and then up to the Bunya's.
We didn't expect to see anything
really different to what we usually see most days at home, and we weren't
disappointed! We saw a fairly miserly 40 species only in the mountains where the
rainforests were very dry and mostly barren of obvious avifauna.We most enyoyed
traversing the euc.woodlands and grasstree areas on the SW slopes.Most
interesting sighting was of a newly fledged Brush Cuckoo being
feed frequently by a very busy White-browed Scrubwren. It took
us some time to figure out the very young cuckoo, narrowing it down to brush or
fantail (it was already too large for any of the bronze cuckoos).We finally
opted for brush in the absence of any eye-ring and very short tail (though this
may be a function of age).The cuckoo had to frequently lift-up its tail to
maintain balance on the branch..Other good sightings included
Wedge-tailed Eagle soaring over the slopes, a pair of
Spotted Pardalote looking for a nest site,great views of
White-throated Treecreepers, Suberb and Variegated
Fairywrens, three species of scrubwren. Only two species of
honeyeater,Lewins and Eastern Spinebill.In the
rainforest we saw a few Russet-tailed Thrush and did manage to
hear a Paradise Riflebird. I tried for the Sooty Owl at the
walk-through fig tree one night with no success.
On the way home stopped by the
roadside about 9km before Maidenwell when we heard an unusual call. Spent about
20 mins and got some good dry country birds which we hadn't seen for a long time
.The unusual (for us) call belonged to Apostlebirds but we also
found Red-rumped Parrots, Pale-headed Rosella, Rufous Whistler, Double
-barred Finch,Restless flycatcher, Superb Fairywrenand then a pair of
Cockatiels flew overhead. In the settlement of Maidenwell
itself we found a party of Grey-crowned Babblers and listened
to their yahooing.
Raptors were few and far between.Apart from
the single wedgie in the mountains we only encountered a single Brown
Falcon on the trip up, and a single White-shouldered
Kite on the way home.
Russ Lamb,
SEQ
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