Dear Birders,
Having a day of meetings in Brisbane on Wednesday I decided to skive off after
work and spend a morning birding around Inskip Point (2.75 hours drive north of
Brisbane) in the hope of catching up with a Black Breasted Button Quail. By the
time I arrived at Rainbow Beach it was already dark so I took a motel room, had
a very second rate meal at the sports club and went to bed early in
anticipation of an early rise.
I was at Inskip Point around 6:30 and was greeted with a chorus of bird calls,
lots of noisy friarbirds, brown honeyeaters, white cheeked honeyeaters and
brush wattlebirds. I picked up a couple of Mangrove Honeyeaters. On the
sandbanks in the river were a mass of birds including little pied cormorants,
Australian pelicans, pied oystercatchers and a bunch of waders too far away to
pick up without a scope.
No sign of the BBBQ in an hour and a half so I resorted to a quick play of the
CD. I must have looked the complete nerd sitting in a clearing in a patch of
thick scrub alongside the walking track running from the last car park to the
tip of the point holding an open laptop in one hand and a speaker in the other
(I had not been able to download the file to a smaller MP3 player in time for
the trip and if I close the laptop it goes into hibernate mode)! Anyway it did
the trick, three BBBQs (one male and 2 females) quietly walked out of the
scrub to investigate. I immediately turned the call off and they quietly
drifted away quite soon. I then turned the call back on briefly and a beautiful
male came from behind me and scratched around in front of me making a platelet
for a couple of minutes before also drifting off . I had not appreciated quite
how small they are - a good thing in a small package.
Having had such a good look at the BBBQ I thought I would push the boundaries
of the birding god a bit further and see if I could find the ground parrot
site, and hopefully the ground parrot, off Cooloola Way just south of Rainbow
Beach with the directions found on Birding Aus. I quickly found Cooloola Way
and drove along it for a few Km and found the track leading off to the left
along power lines. I observed the "no unauthorised traffic" notice and walked
down to the open heathland area. After a couple of hours of bashing through the
heath I came onto a side track leading back towards the power line. I was
beginning to think that this had been an abortive sortie when a ground parrot
flushed from a few feet away a flew 100 m or so before dropping back into the
heath. I flushed it again but then lost it. This side track joins the main
track at a locked gate in the middle of the heath covered plain about 150m
before the small pumping shed. Other nice birds in the area included a forest
kingfisher and a covey of 6 brown quail flushed off the track as I walked back
to the car.
Being very greedy I tried for grass owl near the Brisbane airport at dusk but
dipped on that.
All in all a great days birding.
Regards
Peter Marsh
Birchgrove NSW
==============================www.birding-aus.org
birding-aus.blogspot.com
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