Merry Christmas folks
I guess it is about time I completed my CYP peninsula report.
This leg of the trip was consistent with an opinion I formed when
leafing through the new atlas of Oz birds - that there is a strong
correlation between the location of the birding "hot spots" and the
locations where "rare" birds are observed, and where the most
birdwatchers live. If a "rare" bird lands in Oz, but nobody sees it,
did it really turn up? I suspect that the vagrants that everyone
travels to see [because they land close to where people live] are a
small fraction of the number that arrive.
Vrilya Pt is a top birding spot, but in the few years I've been
subscribed to BOz, I've never seen a reference to it. I posted a
'where's wally' birdlist [with a very interesting combination of
species] to BOz, but no-one picked it. The reason for that, I guess, is
that few birders go there, because they are all going to the known
spots - Iron Range, Weipa, Lockabie Scrub etc, just as the tourists all
go to Chilli Beach and Cape York.
The unmarked turn off to Vrilya Pt is about 28 km south of the Jardine
River, and the first few kays into Crystal Ck are pretty straight
forward. There is an interesting log bridge over Crystal Ck, then a
slow 25 km out to the coast [its one of those roads where if a tree
falls, no-body moves it and everyone drives around it]. The camping is
excellent, and there is a variety of habitats - rainforest along the
escarpment and creeklines, tropical woodland elsewhere, and great
expanses of rocky reefs and sand/mudflats.
This meant there was a corresponding diversity of birds - lots of
waders [although very dispersed at low tide - the water receded about
200 metres, and I got the impression there was only one tidal cycle per
day there]. These proved to be difficult to identify in the rocky
areas, as I didn't have a scope and tended to flush them before I
knew they were there. Nevertheless, I did manage to pick out
sandpipers and plovers, oyster catchers, lapwings, tattlers, golden
plovers, red capped plovers, whimbrels, eastern and reef egrets, and a
dozen or so mangrove bitterns [ie more than you could poke a stick at].
There were crested and lesser crested terns, pelicans and an osprey
that caught a fish under my nose.
There were both laughing and blue winged kookaburras, orange footed
scrubfowl, large tailed nightjars, a tawny frogmouth [I thought I saw a
ninox owl while I was out photographing the southern cross, but it
disappeared before I got back with a decent torch], pied imperial
pigeons, wompoos, peaceful and bar shouldered doves, red winged parrots
and sulphur crested cockatoos, bee eaters, graceful honeyeaters, white
bellied cuckoo shrikes, and white winged trillers.
The great bowerbirds were making their usual racket, so it was easy to
find their well decorated bowers [red, white and green were the colours
of choice]. I also got lucky while poking around the rainforest at the
edge of the escarpment. I was just looking for a likely spot to pull
the toilet paper out, when I heard a new bird call - the "skowlp" [as
Pizzey and Knight put it] of a mischievous looking trumpet manucode -
a species that had eluded me at both the Iron Range and Lockabie Scrub.
There were a couple of them, but I only had a good look at one - good
enough to see its crest and get a decent photo - not an easy thing to
manage in low light.
Anyhow, we only had one night at Vrilya Pt, before it was time to head
south, passing through Lakefield Nat Pk [after the compulsory burger
stop at the Archer River] rather than continuing down the main drag.
Interestingly, the road to Lotus Bird Lodge [closed] was in excellent
condition and in good condition to the park boundary. It then
deteriorated somewhat on the drive through to Bizant. The main birding
highlight of that day was a flock of several hundred red tailed black
cockies down on the ground feeding in a burnt out area. We camped at
the Top Whip Handle campsite [on a billabong] and I got lucky with the
torch, managing to land the beam on a large tailed nightjar chopping
away in the creekbed.
A family of brolgas posed nicely in front of red lily lagoon the next
morning, and the road past the Lakefield and New Laura ranger stations
was in good nick [apart from the odd bull dust section]. We then
proceeded on to Cooktown via Battle Camp Rd - pretty straightforward,
apart from a deep bull dust section, and ford about 15 km before
Endeavour Falls [fairly shallow around the downstream edge]. The drive
through the ranges and into Cooktown was very scenic, and the Cooktown
esplanade was very nice [compete with a sandpiper bobbing on one of the
boats].
According to the QPWS staff [whose office is right on the waterfront]
there was a brown booby recuperating on one of the fishing boats tied
up on the wharf, but no one knew where it was when I went looking for
it. Archer Point had a smattering of shorebirds poking about, but it
was too windy to do any serious birding, so I carried on through Cedar
Bay Nat Park [spent the night at the Bloomfield caravan park, just
north of Ayton - has some nice cabins and access to Weary Bay].
The Bloomfield Track these days is a claytons 4WD route - just two
shallow fords [during the dry] and some steep hills [graded, some with
concrete sections]. The birding highlight was a couple of rose crowned
fruit doves, but there were more 4WDs heading north than you could
scowl at. There were a pair of shining flycatchers on the Marrdja
board walk, a flock of white rumped swiftlets near the Daintree
lookout, and a pair of Ospreys nesting in a transmission tower at Wonga
Beach. From there, I spent a day at Mt Lewis [nice to see a golden
bowerbird on his bower] before spending two days beating back along the
bitumen to Brisbane.
All up, an enjoyable three weeks in good country, and a privilege to
visit one of the last remaining coastal "frontier" on the eastern
seaboard - I believe it is only a matter of time before the demands of
tourism and indigenous economic development result in a bitumen road to
the "top" of Australia.
Regards, Laurie.
Birding-Aus is on the Web at
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