highlights, SEQ, 500m

15 May - 27 June
Weather:- Cold increasing. Much rain.
highlights, SEQ, 500m

A wet winter. Astounding to us here. It seems to have impacted on BOWER-building too. In this first part of the year, the bower is usually up and down again and again. But this year, the platform is soggy, and the few attempts the bird has made to re-build (often after an overnight storm), end in a dark, wet mess of collapsing sticks. Still, there are one or two 'black' birds in residence, and 'green' birds numbering >10. Churring is coming across, too, from the neighbouring properties. BRUSH TURKEYs continue to pass through our place, and they're still digging along the edges of garden beds, including the one with the bower in it. I was startled one day to hear a SATIN BOWERBIRD mimicking a Brush Turkey, the grunt somewhat fainter. And surprised on another day to see one 'black' bird 'tutoring' another 'black' bird on the traditional workshopping ground -- I've only ever seen 'green' birds receiving 'dance instruction' before. The bowerbirds have spread more widely on our place this year than in the past.

        On 17 May, a YELLOW-FACED HONEYEATER appeared briefly in the garden, and on the 21st we had our first WOMPOO FRUIT-DOVE, in the MB Fig. What a delight. Whenever the sun comes out, this figtree is full of bowerbirds, PIED CURRAWONGs, a BROWN CUCKOO-DOVE, LITTLE WATTLEBIRDs, LEWIN'S HONEYEATERs, BROWN THORNBILLs... That day, two BLUE-FACED HONEYEATERs were alarming, all alone, in the neighbours' blackwoods.

        By 2 June, the wattlebirds were nesting. We first noticed this by a NEST in the cypresses right by the house. Very cold, it was, at that time. They've been energetically chasing friarbirds away.
      On 9 June there was much alarming on the northern ridge -- and two GREY GOSHAWKs floated from over our house, across the ridge. Great.
  This year, EASTERN YELLOW ROBINs are a daily sight, so that I wonder whether the unseasonal rains have brought them back to us. BOOBOOKs call at night sometimes, and the STRIATED PARDALOTEs have been calling insistently for weeks. On 27 June, SULPHUR-CRESTED COCKATOOS passed over. We do not see them much now.

        As always, though, we also watch GREY FANTAILs, GREY SHRIKE-THRUSHes, PALE-HEADED ROSELLAs, RAINBOW LORIKEETs, SCALY-BREASTED LORIKEETs, TORRESIAN CROWs, RED-BROWED FIRETAILs, BAR-SHOULDERED DOVEs, MANED WOOD DUCKS, and so on.

        One day in June, I had an amazing diary entry: On 26 June last year, I'd written 'White-bellied Sea-Eagle'. On the same day this year, immediately below it, I entered the same sighting again: WHITE-BELLIED SEA-EAGLE.
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Driving along the range recently, I've seen ROSE ROBINs, and was startled to find, among some banksias just over the eastern lip of the range, WHITE-CHEEKED HONEYEATERS... Somehow I'm more used to seeing these in coastal areas. In the same spot, were BROWN HONEYEATERs, LEWIN'S HONEYEATERs, YELLOW-FACED HONEYEATER, EASTERN SPINEBILL, and LITTLE WATTLEBIRDs.

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Reading, as always, and I followed up Konrad LORENZ's 'Here Am I -- Where Are You?' with Howard HOFFMAN's 'Amorous Turkeys and Addicted Ducklings', in the research of which he set out to show that the time for 'imprinting' was not as limited as Lorenz had declared. Also I've been reading 'Crow' by Boria SAX -- more mythology than ornithology, as it turns out! -- and Jeffrey MASSON's 'The Emperor's Embrace: fatherhood in evolution'.

        'The Island of the Colourblind' is by the lovely Oliver SACKS, and it brings together his profession of Neurology with his fascination for Cycads, in his island visits to observe vision-disturbance, and a Pacific-atoll disease. Evolution is a thread running beneath his writing, and he incidentally mentions one of my favourite books, 'The Beak of the Finch'.

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(Today is 7 July, and the sun's been out at last, and warm, for several days. Spring. I've just heard by phone that the bowerbirds are 'swarming' around the bower -- many 'green' birds with one 'black'; and one of the 'green' birds showing black feathers coming through his plumage. Perhaps M1's bower will finally be well up when I arrive tomorrow...)

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Judith L-A
S-E Qld
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