By an oversight I sent this out with an attachment, which was meant for private
recivers. It is now sent out once more, without the offending attachment (by
the way, my annotated bird list from the Australia trip). Sorry about the
mistake
Wim Vader
________________________________
Fra: Wim Vader
Sendt: 18. september 2006 09:18
Til: birding-aus
Kopi: birdchat; ; Sabirdnet
Emne: VS: Once more Down Under.1. Bargara Beach
________________________________
ONCE MORE DOWN UNDER. 1. BARGARA BEACH, QUEENSLAND
This (southern) winter I have had once more the chance to visit Australia, a
country that has fascinated me for a long time. This is my seventh visit
already, including almost a whole year in Sydney in 1993. But the last time was
five years ago and concerned mainly Tasmania and Victoria, so I have to learn
many of the sights and especially sounds anew.
Riet and I arrive at Brisbane airport early in the morning of 26 July after the
loooong flights from Europe, and have trouble keeping our eyes open. While
waiting for the airtrain into town, the first Australian bird we see is most
appropriately the Welcome Swallow! A few others follow, here and from the
comfortable Tilt train to Bundaberg, but we are nodding off repeatedly. Most
noticeable were the very many Fairy Martins at the Roma street railway station
in Brisbane, a tight flock of a few hundred Straw-necked Ibises, and most
unexpected for me, a large Pheasant Coucal flopping away from the train near
Gympie.
On arrival at Bundaberg station (I should have guessed that this would be
Bundie locally in the abbreviation-loving land of Oz) daughter Anna with Kjetil
and one year old Sigurd are there to fetch us. They had arrived a few days
earlier on their 32 ft sailing yacht Ægir from New Caledonia. Through the good
offices of Birding-ausser Jill Dening we have been able to rent a unit at
Sandcastles-on-the beach in Bargara Beach, and this turned out to be an
excellent choice: close to the beach, with a nice large porch and a view over
the golf course across the road. Early in the morning (daylight comes
surprisingly late here) I hear all sorts of bird calls, many easy enough to
sort out even for me: the splintered screeches of Rainbow Lorikeets, feeding on
the Grevilleas in neighbouring gardens, the intricate caroling of Australian
Magpies, and the electronic beeps of Magpie-Larks. Noisy Miners live up to
their name, and there is a very tame family of Pied Butcherbirds, my favourite
Aussie songsters. On the golf course Masked Plovers shriek, and the roadside
wires held many doves and even some Figbirds. On the beach, a nice sandy beach
with some stony outcrops and a few mangroves even, small flocks of Silver Gulls
and Crested Terns rest, while Great Cormorants pass by offshore.
Quite unexpectedly for me, a pair of Ospreys appears on 'our beach', one even
picking up a stick. Are they nesting nearby? Probably, as we will see them
daily. Another bird I somehow had not expected here is the Cockatiel, but they
are here with a vengeance: a flock of at least 40 arrives and occupies the
neighbour's lawn, not much bothered by the efforts of the Noisy Miners to chase
them off. The cockatiels give the lawn a very thorough treatment; what do they
find there?
This first day, still pretty jet-lagged, we walk a bit down the road to a small
tree-lined lagoon, where we quickly discover a number of nice birds; Australia
boast lots of interesting and colourful species. Rainbow Bee-eaters sally out
over the lagoon, Sacred Kingfishers sit watchfully on bare branches, and there
are also various herons: an active Little Egret, a somewhat more sedate Reef
Egret, and a secretive Mangrove Heron. A few sacred Ibisies also poke round in
the shallow water. A small island holds a few pelicans and a single Black Swan;
Pacific Black Ducks, Grey Teal and coots swim, upend and dive, and in shallower
parts there are Dusky Moorhens and the ever elegant Black-winged Stilts.
Cormorants in the background; here mainly Little Black and Pied. All common
birds , I know, but a wonderful introduction for newly arrived visitors anyway.
In the trees around the lagoon Brown Honeyeaters are singing lustily, while a
few other small birds manage to keep ut of sight of jet-lagged eyes. This first
day the weather is perfect, partly cloudy and maybe 23*C.
But in the night it starts to rain and then pour, and this continues most of
the day so that by the end of the second day there is water everywhere. The
landscape around Bundaberg is almost completely flat and dominated by sugar
cane fields. In the late afternoon the rain became a bit more intermittent, and
we ventured out again, visiting Burnett Heads and Bundaberg Port near the river
mouth. With all the water on the fields a lot of birds 'had come out of the
woodworks', and the fields were full of herons and ibises, while there suddenly
also were pairs of Maned Ducks galore. One of the puddles held the only
Chestnut Teals of the entire trip.
At Burnett Heads the dripping wattle trees were full of birds: Lewin's and
Dusky Honeyeaters, and surprisingly often Mistletoebirds. Welcome Swallows
collected mud from the innumerable puddles and dapper Peaceful Doves tripped
around them. Here we also saw our first Galahs and Pale-headed Rosellas.
On stones in the river there were hundreds of cormorants, mostly Pied and
Little Black, and several beacons held statuesque Darters. Crested Terns and to
my surprise also Brown Boobies plunge-dived in the marina harbour, and Brahminy
Kites flapped lazily overhead. Few shorebirds as yet, but one muddy corner
holds a few Greenshanks, a single Sharp-tailed Sandpiper, one each of Whimbrel
and Far-eastern Curlew, as well as a few plovers, which I made out to be
Double-banded Plovers. In the village we stopped at an inundated field full of
Silver Gulls and Cattle Egrets (for once without cattle), and discover first a
Grey-crowned Babbleron the ground, and later Spangled Drongos on the overhead
wires.
The next day we sailed on the Ægir from Bundaberg to the river mouth and back,
and thus got a good chance to see the river birds: Mangrove Herons and Nankeen
Night Herons, Pied Oystercatchers, Whistling and Brahminy Kites and impressive
While-belied Sea Eagles, and near the sea lots of cormorants, darters and
boobies. All the beacons in the river had small colonies of Welcome Swallows,
and every time we passed one, a few of the swallows came on board, sat on the
railing and sang lustily! What can be the biological significance of that?
In the afternoon I walked back to the Money lagoon, only to find that all the
birds were gone! Two ducks and five gulls was all that was left, the lagoon was
full of muddy water, and a veritable river had broken through to the sea. So we
had been just in time the day before!
The last day in Bundaberg we visited the local 'nature reserve', Baldwin swamp,
a somewhat park-like wetland, full of birds and with a nice network of trails,
as usually in this country. Here there are lots of wildfowl, Hardheads, Purple
Swamphens, and the weird Magpie Geese, and I even find my first life bird of
this trip, the Cotton Pygmy Goose. Another highlight is a family of Red-backed
Wrens, so definitely among my favourite small birds in this country. There are
both Rufous and Golden Whistlers here, Olive-backed Orioles, trillers, Jacky
Winter, and of course the inevitable Silvereyes. It is good training for the
weeks to come.
Ana and Kjetil drive us all the way back to Brisbane. On the way we take a
random sideroad near Couron, and have a picnic along the road. Here the bird
life is already a bit more southern, with magpies, Currawongs, and even Eastern
Rosellas. Small flocks of Scaly-breasted Lorikeets shriek past incessantly,
the air is full of Torresian crows, and on the road-verge Red-browed Finches
potter. And I am even so lucky as to see my second ever White-eared Monarch
here, so intent on feeding that I can watch it at leisure.
A great week in so many respects!
Wim Vader,
Tromsø Museum
9037
Tromsø, Norway
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