To Boigu and Beyond

Start with the Gurney's eagle.

 

Another one starting off an amazing trip report and taking their time finishing it

Don’t pull a Mentawai on us, willya?

 

I've just been a bit busy with other things of late, but it's on my to do list, especially now all the photos for it are up in the galleries.



Hix

 

Day 7 – 12th March

Once again we were up at 5:30 for breakfast to be ready to leave at 6:00. But this morning it was raining quite heavily and after discussing the situation with Joe, Richard decided we would wait until it became light before heading to the island as landing could be tricky due to the tides. So we stayed on the boat and when it became light the Eclipse moved out of the channel and up to the village. In the tenders we had a wet landing; because it was low tide the tenders had to go to a boat ramp and we had to jump out into the mud/sand and walk up the ramp to the road. Joe, in bare feet, jumped out over the side and the impact of his foot went about six inches into the sand. But the bottom three inches was black mangrove mud, which can be smelly and sticky, so I was more careful when I got out. As we knew beforehand it would be a wet landing where we might be in water or mud (as opposed to a dry landing on a jetty), I was wearing thongs (flip flops) on my feet and I had to clean my feet in a puddle before drying them and putting on socks and boots.

The telecommunications tower usually has a pair of Ospreys and a pair of Peregrine Falcons nesting on it, but we saw neither as we walked along the waterfront to the main road. Because of our delayed start, it was 9:30 before we set off through the town and down the road that would lead us into the interior. In town I saw a couple of White-breasted Woodswallows, but nowhere near the numbers that we saw on Boigu. Leaving the town we passed the water treatment pond, but saw no ducks or waders on it. I was bringing up the rear because I’d been having trouble with my backpack and was about 50 metres behind the others when I heard a familiar parrot vocalisation and looked up to see a couple of recognisable silhouettes flying above.

“Lorikeets, above me!” I called out to the others and immediately tried to get a few photos before they disappeared. Everyone else turned and saw them, and I think heard them as well, because the Coconut Lorikeet is one of the target species we were looking for.

Coconut Lorikeets​

Rainbow Lorikeets (Trichoglossus moluccanus) are a familiar sight in many Australian cities on the eastern seaboard, and also in Perth where they have been introduced. Until recently they were a complex of several different subspecies ranging from Australia up into south-eastern Asia, the different subspecies often determined by the colour of the nape, or the breast or some other features. Recently some subspecies have been elevated to full species status, and one of the New Guinea species – the Coconut Lorikeet (Trichoglossus haemotodus) – ventures onto Boigu and Saibai. The previous three trips had not sighted any, but I had just found a pair flying overhead. As you would expect, they sound and look almost identical to the common Rainbow Lorikeet I’m more familiar with.

Saibai is a larger island than Boigu, but while the coastal areas are typical mangroves, the interior of the island has a large wetland savannah, grassy and with Pandanus trees. The wetlands are still tidal and there isn’t too far you can go off the road without running into water. Passing the end of the runway we entered this savannah, and one of the first birds we encountered was a lone Brolga on the other side of shallow ‘lake’ (I’m not too familiar with the wetland terminology) and then another pair about 100 metres from where we were standing.

Brolga​

A little further along I again heard a familiar lorikeet-type call, but it sounded a bit wrong. Richard also heard it and thought it might be Lorikeets but we couldn’t find them. Then we discovered that White-bellied Cuckoo-shrikes have a similar call and a quartet of them had deceived us.

The road we were on is a relatively new ‘all-weather’ road; previously it was a muddy track. It travels a couple of kilometres into the savannah to a water reservoir, where we stopped, had a quick rest (the sun had broken through the clouds and was quite fierce by now), and looked around for birds. Richard thought it a good place to play some calls of New Guinea species he thought might be here, like Spangled Kookaburra and Golden Monarch. As the sun had come out with a vengeance we sat on our stools in the shade and waited to see if the calls would be answered. The only activity we got was from a few Brown Honeyeaters chasing each other in the Pandanus, a couple of Rufous-banded Honeyeaters and some Golden-headed Cisticolas which were ignoring the calls. Hidden by some long grasses, but sitting on a stump, I found a juvenile Willie Wagtail, with heavy white eybrows.

Brown Honeyeater​

Rufous-banded Honeyeater​

Golden-headed Cisticola​

Juvenile Willie Wagtail​

Some of us were going to follow the road through the long grass a bit further and so we put on our snake-proof gaiters – the island has Papuan Black Snakes and Papuan Taipans – and prepared to leave when things started to happen, and got a little confusing.

Rob, who had wandered a bit further along the reservoir’s fence, came back saying he had just photographed a Papuan Harrier, a real rarity. Richard tried to look at the photo on the back of Rob’s camera but in the bright sunshine it was hard to see clearly. Rob went to show Richard where the bird was in the Pandanus, but the bird flew off about 100 metres parallel to the road we had just walked up. Everybody else ran down the road to try and see the Harrier, unsuccessfully. We all could see a couple of large black birds sitting in a tree, but we pretty quickly established that they were a pair of Torresian Crows and the Harrier was no-where to be seen.

Then Jenny spotted a raptor some distance away launch itself into the air and fly directly away from us. She quickly took a few images of it and although I saw it just before disappearing from view, I wasn’t quick enough to get some shots too. But we did not think this was the Harrier.

Back at the reservoir Richard finally found the harrier about 30 metres away in a small tree, but it was facing way from us and there was a large leaf hanging down obscuring the bird’s head and back making confirmation of its identity difficult. As I was already wearing my gaiters I slowly made my way into the marsh towards the bird to try and get a better photo of it. When I was about 15 metres away it flew off.

(In the evening when we could look at the images on computers we realised it wasn’t a Harrier, but a New Guinea subspecies of the Brown Goshawk (Accipiter fasciatus dogwa). Actually, there were two, because the Crows we had seen had been harassing another. But when Jenny’s photo of a bird of prey flying away was looked at carefully it turned out to be a Variable Goshawk, the third record in Australia, and the second record had happened on Boigu only a fortnight earlier!)

Brown Goshawk​

So after all the drama with the raptors had finished we collected our gear and started back down the road towards town. When the road reached the runway it passed between the runway and mangrove swamp. When I got there I found Bob peering into the mangroves with his camera and I asked him what he was looking for, thinking it was a bird.

“You’re into mammals” he said “and I’m sure you know those calls – what species are they likely to be?”

I listened to a screeching that was easy to recognise, the vocalisations of an encampment of Fruit Bats, also known as Flying Foxes.

“Well,” I said, “there are four possible species: the Spectacled, the Black, the Little Red or the Big-eared Fruit Bats”.

“It’s not the Spectacled” Bob said.

“No, Spectacled are expected to be here, but there are no records of them. The Black Flying-Fox is generally all black, the Little Red is mostly a reddish colour, and the Big-eared – which is only in New Guinea and on these islands – is black with a paler collar” I recalled from reading a field guide a few weeks previously.

“You have a look and tell me what they are” said Bob.

So I pushed my way a few feet past the curtain of vines and peered into the mangroves. The bats were about 20 metres in and there was a lot of branches, vines and trees obscuring them making viewing very difficult. I could see them fanning themselves with their black wings but not much else. I tried to walk in further but the water was too deep for my boots, so I retreated back to the road and tried another spot further up that I thought might be closer to them. It wasn’t closer, but I had a slightly better view and could take a few photos if I focussed the camera manually.

They looked like Big-eared Fruit Bats, and the photos I took confirmed that clearly showing the pointed ear tips and the yellowy collar. Another Lifer.

Big-eared Fruit Bats​

After stopping at the shop for the obligatory ice-cream or soft drink, we met up at a shelter by a seawall which had a metal set of stairs for climbing down to boats. Richard radioed Joe on the Eclipse to come and get us in the tenders and we settled down to wait the 20 minutes or so for them to arrive (they had moved the Eclipse around the corner into some calmer waters).

While waiting I photographed some skinks running around the picnic benches we were sitting on, which I tentatively identified as a Cryptoblepharus species (and later confirmed as Striped Shining Skinks Cryptoblepharus virgatus), when we saw a couple of speedboats set off from the New Guinea coastline and head directly towards us. They took five to ten minutes to cross the three kilometre stretch of water and were met on arrival by an Australian Border Force officer (formerly known as Customs and Immigration). Then we saw three people carrying a limp child up the metal stairs from the boat. A vehicle arrived and they put the child in and took them to the hospital. I also noticed some other people from the boat with backpacks hanging around, and five other people in the second boat also with backpacks.

Striped Snake-eyed Skink​

Shortly thereafter we were collected and returned to the Eclipse, who then sailed back to Gurney’s corner for the afternoon.

Em and Jenny in one of the tenders​

The afternoon was spent watching birds fly back to PNG, but unfortunately we saw no Gurney’s Eagle and no Coconut Lorikeets (although Joe had seen about a dozen earlier that morning). As I was tired I spent much of the time asleep in my chair. By dinner time I realised I was very sunburnt on my nose – despite my wearing a wide-brimmed hat – and the back of my left hand was also burnt, probably the result of using it to hold my hat on my head when speeding along in the tender. They were sore, but I didn’t realise how much worse things were going to get.

Tomorrow: Saibai again

​

Hix

 

Day 8 – 13th March

This morning was a little different. Because Joe had seen some Lorikeets flying over the channel the previous morning, so half of us stayed on the Eclipse in the channel for a couple of hours this morning watching what flew over, while the others went ashore to the Saibai Cemetery (a good birding spot). Those that remained onboard were rewarded with views of Collared Imperial Pigeons, Torresian Imperial Pigeons, a small school of Metallic Starlings, and flying up the river were some Whimbrels, a Brahminy Kite, and some Crested Terns. But no Coconut Lorikeets.

Crested Tern​

My nose felt red raw from the sun, and the back of my hand was painful to touch. But while having breakfast onboard I put my left hand on the side of my face and found my jaw was quite sore, but only when pressure was put on it. I poked around and realised that the main area of sensitivity was actually the part of the jaw below the gumline. Having had pain here in the past, this generally denoted a dying tooth nerve but there was no corresponding pain into the tooth. I assumed it was a bacterial infection where the nerve had been as that tooth had had a root canal in the past. This infection could lead to an abscess and massive swelling (as I’ve had that before too). And in this remote location I didn’t fancy my chances of easily finding an experienced dentist. I was taking Doxycycline – an antibiotic – for malaria, but I had another broad-spectrum antibiotic in my medical kit for chest infections so I took one of those too in the hope it might help with the infection. It wasn’t swollen, and a couldn’t feel anything at all except when I pushed on the edge of the jaw. I kept this to myself, as I didn’t want sympathy or undo attention, and more importantly, anybody overreacting (as my mother used to do whenever there was anything wrong with her children). Nor did I want to cause any disruption to the trip or – worse still – be medivac-ed to Thursday Island and have my trip cut short.

Leaving the Eclipse we again came ashore at around 9:30 in front of the telecommunications tower. On top of the tower is an Osprey nest, and while I couldn’t see any ospreys around, I did see something sitting in the shadows on a support beam further down. It could have been a piece of metal, or equipment, but I wanted to be sure. As I was getting my camera out of my drybag I drew everyone’s attention to it. It turned out to be a Peregrine Falcon – apparently they nest on the tower too. And just before leaving the tower, a White-bellied Sea Eagle flew past as well.

Peregrine Falcon​

White-bellied Sea-Eagle​

We trudged down the road to the cemetery which is out of town, next to some mangroves. Upon arriving the first thing I did was put on some more mosquito repellent. Then, while the others looked at some swifts high up that were invisible to me, I wandered back down the path and saw an Orange-footed Scrubfowl fly up into a tree, and a Varied Triller.

Orange-footed Scrubfowl​

Varied Triller​

Back at the cemetery I could hear Black Butcherbirds calling from the vegetation, but the only thing I could see was a pair of Willie Wagtails. While half the group were driven out to the Water Reservoir we had been at the previous day, Richard took the remainder of us, plus Herbert, a village elder, through the cemetery and beyond, into the mangroves looking for the Red-capped Flowerpecker. Apparently this was a good site for them and Richard had seen them here on the previous visits a few weeks earlier. Unfortunately, all we saw was a Tawny-breasted Honeyeater. Returning to the cemetery we piled into Herbert’s 4WD and he drove us out to the reservoir.

Willie Wagtail​

We spent about an hour out there, but today there was not a lot happening bird-wise. We saw the Brolgas again on the way out, but apart from the odd White-breasted Woodswallow and Torresian Crow, there didn’t seem to be much around.

Torresian Crow​

Sitting on a pile of wooden pallets beside the reservoir’s fence I was trying to keep my nose and hand out of the direct sun. Despite some cloud there was plenty of sunshine, and it had bite. I had applied sunblock liberally, but that sun felt fierce on my damaged skin.

Herbert, the village elder (who is only in his thirties but is one of the council leaders), sat down on the pallets beside me and I struck up a conversation about birds in general, Saibai Island, life in the Torres Strait Islands, Papua New Guinea, the coronavirus etc etc. Over the course of 20 minutes I learnt quite a bit.

There is a special arrangement in Torres Strait, between the Australian and Papua New Guinea (PNG) governments whereby Torres Strait Islanders that are residents of the islands closest to PNG, and New Guineans living in twelve specific villages opposite these islands, can travel back and forth between the islands an the PNG villages for trading and other purposes, as they have done traditionally over the centuries. This is done without the need of a passport, but biosecurity and immigration officials still meet them. However, because the coronavirus had been detected in New Guinea (but not in these villages), the border had been closed to people from PNG coming over. The only exception is for medical emergencies.

I asked Herbert if he knew about the child that had been brought over the previous afternoon by speedboat; he was aware of the incident, but told me it wasn’t a snakebite as occasionally happens – New Guinea and the islands have Papuan Taipans and Black Snakes – but a severe case of diarrhoea leading to dehydration. Apparently, a common malady amongst children. Herbert was more concerned with the ‘relatives’ that came over with the child in the second speedboat, those with backpacks who immediately went off to visit friends, using the child as an excuse to travel.

I asked Herbert about the medical situation on island (familiar with the hospitals on Christmas Island and the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, and knowing their limitations) and found it was what I expected – nothing more than a basic clinic. They could look after many things, including dehydrated children, but anything serious that requires even basic surgery has to be done on Thursday Island. And then I asked the question I had been steering the conversation towards: what about dentistry – was there a dentist on the island? The answer was no, if you have a toothache you have to go to Thursday Island.

Having established there was not much I could do about my tooth, I turned the conversation back to wildlife. Herbert had just said something about organising a special dinner for some PNG Village councillors coming to discuss the coronavirus with the Saibai Island council, and I remembered how in PNG they celebrate dignitaries arriving in their villages: they slaughter a pig. I hadn’t seen any domestics in the village except dogs, cats and chickens.

"Do you have pigs on the island?” I asked.

“Yes, we have one” he replied. “I’ve been trying to shoot it for a while now, but he is very crafty.”

He told me there used be sounder of pigs roaming the island, originally introduced for hunting purposes, but when damage they did to the environment became apparent it was decided to eradicate them. And now only this one boar is left. And then Herbert said something that surprised me.

“I want to get some goats” he said.

When I asked why, he explained: the local people hunt a lot, mainly for food, and without pigs the only other land creatures worth hunting were deer. The locals also periodically hunt dugongs and sea-turtles for traditional, ceremonial reasons, and Herbert wants to reduce the number of hunts, but having something else on the island to hunt would help his cause. Goats seemed a logical choice.

However, he was unaware that feral goats are a similar environmental disaster to pigs, until I shared my concerns with him. I had heard of efforts to re-introduce Agile Wallabies onto other Torres Strait Islands where they had once roamed, and suggested he look into this instead as wallabies would be a more traditional food, and would be better for the environment.

It was time to return to town, so we squeezed back into Herbert’s 4WD and headed back, stopping to drop me off at the bat colony so I could try and get some better photos of the Big-eared Fruit Bats.

“Watch out for the crocodile, there’s one that hangs around here” said Herbert as they drove off. Information that would have been handy yesterday, I thought.

The bats had moved and were roosting in trees up to 50 metres from where they had been the day before, so I pushed into the mangroves further round. It wasn’t quite so flooded here so I could progress further in, but slowly as it was still wet and I had to move carefully on the dry patches. Unfortunately, as I got closer, the bats flew further away and after fifteen minutes I still had no photos and decided to head back to the road as I still had a kilometre or so to walk into town, and I didn’t want to be late and hold up the boat.

Closer to town was a large sewage treatment pond upon which some of the other birders had seen ducks the previous day. Checking it out I saw some Wandering Whistle-ducks, three of which took flight. And on the fence I got some nice close-ups of a male Olive-backed Sunbird. The only other bird I saw was a juvenile Whistling Kite.

Wandering Whistle-ducks​

Olive-backed Sunbird​

Whistling Kite​

I got back to the others in good time and we went back to the Eclipse for lunch, which then moved back to Gurney’s Corner for the afternoon.

After lunch I was feeling very hot, and not well at all. I didn’t have a fever, and having a lie down made me feel better, but getting up and moving around made me hot again, so I spent much of the afternoon on my bunk while the others sat on the top deck looking for birds flying over.

After an hour or so a call went out and I grabbed my camera and raced back up on deck. Flying in the distance was a Long-tailed Honey Buzzard, a New Guinea species that had only been seen once before, eleven years previously on Boigu, but that sighting was not accepted by Birdlife Australia’s Rarities Committee (or BARC). This time, however, the submission would have several photos. By the tie I got on deck the bird was further away, and my photos show it in the distance unfortunately. After fifteen minutes I was feeling hot again and went back to my bunk. I think it was not just the sunburns, but perhaps the infection in my jaw that was making me feel ill. On a good note, the jaw was not any worse.

Long-tailed Honey Buzzard​

An hour later another call went out: Gurney’s Eagle! Another New Guinea species, almost as large as a Wedgetail Eagle, that regularly flies over to Saibai. When first sighted it was only 500 metres away, but by the time I had scrambled out of my bunk and got up on deck it had rapidly risen quite high up and was only a small speck in the clouds, but it was enough for me to get photos and over the next 20 minutes took a few photos, especially when it came back towards the boat.

Gurney’s Eagle​

That evening Herbert joined us onboard for dinner. He answered a lot of questions from the others in my group about life in the islands and the wildlife he had seen on Saibai. And he asked us a lot of questions about birds and wildlife in general.

Biggles, Tom, Herbert and Mike after dinner.​

Tomorrow: travelling to Ugar Island.

​

Hix

 

Sounds like a great trip. I would want to drop a line and have a fish while there.
What species of deer do they have? Some Cape York islands have Moluccan Rusa.

 

Yes, it's Rusa (or so I'm told).

And while I don't fish myself, some fishing was done which will be mentioned in tomorrows post.



Hix

 

Great trip report as usual Hix. I'm jealous.

 

Saw some of the images pop up on the gallery, did not realise it was for this! Will have to go back and read more.

 

Day 9 – 14th March

Today was a travel day. so we didn’t have to get up in the dark, allowing us to sleep in. After breakfast the Eclipse set off towards Ugar Island which is around 100 kilometres away. The ocean was a bit bumpy at times but, even though I hadn’t taken seasickness tablets, I didn’t feel queasy at all. It was a bright sunny day, warm and humid, but up on the top deck there was a pleasant, if warm, breeze. And after lunch, a full stomach, the warm breeze and the rocking of the boat, conditions were very conducive to napping. The trip was expected to take all day so I spent some of my awake time reading, doing Sudokus, working on the laptop, or dozing. Only occasionally was a bird seen, usually a tern or a noddy.

The Eclipse is a charter vessel that is used mainly for fishing charters, so the crew are pretty good at fishing. At lunch time Sam threw a line over the back and within a short space of time he had caught a large Spanish Mackerel. And within half-an-hour he’d caught another, just as large as the first. He then spent the afternoon cleaning and filleting them.

In the afternoon we started seeing some feeding aggregations of Black Noddies; initially they were in groups of about 30, but later some larger groups of a few hundred noddies with a dozen or so Roseate and Common Terns were seen feeding on fish schools. Some of them were only a couple of hundred metres from the boat.

Common Terns and Black Noddies feeding, Ugar Island in the background​

At around 2:30pm we stopped on the south-eastern side of a small, uninhabited sand island called Campbell Islet (on Google Maps it’s called Campbell Island). The water was calm here and so the Eclipse would anchor here overnight. Ugar Island, which we would visit the next day, is about 7.5 kilometres away.

Campbell Islet​

Those of us that wanted to visit Campbell Islet were taken out in a tender and dropped off so we could explore the island and go for a swim (there are no crocodiles around here), and so I grabbed my cameras and jumped in the tender.

Campbell Islet is only 1.5 kilometres long and around 150 metres wide at its widest point which was where we were dropped off, on the north-eastern end. Although it’s mostly a sand island it has quite a bit of coastal vegetation covering most of the island, resulting in one long beach that rings the islet. My intention was to walk around the island and photograph any birds that might be on the island, and to have a swim – or at least sit down and have a soak, as the water was quite shallow for a fair way out. Bob and Karyl were enjoying the water and it looked so inviting, but I decided birds were my priority so I set out south along the eastern beach where Graham and Jenny had gone ahead. A couple of hundred metres down was a rocky platform sticking out of the sand which looked like the remains of a coral reef that had at one point been submerged and later lifted a few feet above sea level. On the beach next to this platform was a group of tattlers – I counted 43 – and Graham had heard them call so could identify them as Grey-tailed Tattlers (Wandering Tattlers are almost identical but have a different call). On the sand and on the rocks were a couple of dozen Sand Plovers, mainly Lesser but a few Greaters, a dozen or so Ruddy Turnstones and the odd Red-necked Stint and Pacific Golden Plover.

Bob & Karyl cooling off. Ugar in the background.​

Beach on Campbell Islet​

Grey-tailed Tattlers​

Ruddy Turnstones​

Moving further down the beach, behind this rocky platform we found at the other end of the platform two pairs of Grey Plovers, a pair of Australian Pied Oystercatchers, both white and grey morphs of Eastern Reef Egrets and then, a bonus for me, a pair of Beach Stone Curlews. This is not a species commonly seen in Sydney, and I had been looking for them every time one was reported in the Sydney area, but to no avail. I had hoped to see one in Cairns on the Esplanade but dipped again. So to see a pair here was exciting (it’s another Lifer).

Australian Pied Oystercatcher​

Eastern Reef Egrets​

Beach Stone-Curlews​

Small birds could be heard in the vegetation behind us, and fleeting glimpses could be seen of them flitting amongst the foliage, but it was hard to get good looks at them, however they turned out to be the ubiquitous Olive-backed Sunbird, Pale (or Ashy-bellied) White-eye – one of our Torresian target species – and Spectacled Monarch. Both the White-eye and Monarch were lifers for me but my views were obscured by the foliage so I couldn’t really count them on my list.

Suddenly, all the waders took flight and flew around before settling on the beach a few hundred metres further down. About this time Graham and Jenny turned back towards our drop-off point, but I continued on down the beach. The reason why the birds had taken flight suddenly became apparent – Sam came walking up the beach, having walked around the islet in the opposite direction, and as he approached birds further up the beach had taken flight, which spooked the birds further along the beach near me.

We said ‘Hi’ as we passed each other, and then I turned around and asked “Found any shells yet?” as I knew he was looking for them because Em collects shells.

“Not yet” he replied, and then added “but there’s my first!” and I saw him bend down for a white scallop-shaped shell sitting on the sand by the water’s edge, about two feet from my footprint trail in the sand. I thought it was half a bivalve shell, but as he picked it up I could see the sand under it lift with it; there was obviously more of the shell buried in the sand. As it came out I could see it wasn’t a bivalve at all, but a large fully-intact Nautilus shell! The white part I had seen – and the only part above the sand – was the part around the shells opening.

“You bastard!!!” I said, repeating my mock tirade from a few days previously “I’ve been looking for one of those for fifty years!”

Sam laughed as he bent down to wash the sand out of the shell. “Em’s gonna love this” he said.

He continued down the beach in high spirits, and I continued on along in the opposite direction, pissed off at myself as I had walked past the damn thing and never even saw it!

A few minutes later I was photographing the Beach Stone-curlews again when Em came along, following in Sam’s footsteps. I asked her if she’d found any shells, and she replied she hadn’t, but she thought Sam was looking too and maybe he’d found one. I was tempted to say something, but that would have spoiled the surprise so I just wished her luck and kept on plodding along the beach, keeping a close eye on the sand near the water’s edge in case there were any more nautili.

Em and Beach Stone-curlews​

But the birds kept distracting me as there were so many. In flight I photographed the Pied Oystercatchers, Eastern Reef Egrets, Common Terns, Crested Terns and Little Terns, and in the skies above were Greater and Lesser Frigatebirds.

Australian Pied Oystercatcher​

Little Tern​

Greater Frigatebird male​

Lesser Frigatebird male​

Back from the beach on a dead shrub I saw some movement and found some more Striped Snake-eyed Skinks in the sand and on the trunks, so I spent a bit of time photographing them before some small passerines twittering in the vegetation attracted my attention. From their calls I could tell they were the Ashy-bellied White-eye and so I pushed my way into the bushes to see them, stepping over a large log that looked like flotsam that had been washed up in the last storm surge. The white-eyes successfully avoided any photos and disappeared into denser vegetation so I made my way back to the beach. As I stepped over the large log I checked it to see if any skinks were on it and saw in the sand, right by my foot, an almost completely buried nautilus! It was on its side with the brown bands exposed and when I pulled it out I could see that it was very faded, presumably it was old, but it looked better once I had washed it. The shell around the openings was broken and split but otherwise it was in pretty good condition. I put it in my pocket and continued on with a spring in my step and a very big grin on my face. And the warm feeling inside of self-satisfaction.

The southern end of the island had a few hundred birds on a sand spit, of several different species. Many of the waders I had passed had flown up here when they had tired of the attentions of the other birds, or Sam and Em had got too close. The three species of terns were here as well as the Golden, Grey and Sand Plovers, the Stints, the Tattlers, the Beach Stone Curlews, the Reef Egrets and the Turnstones. There were also Whimbrels, Bar-tailed Godwits, and Greenshanks. The Pied Oystercatchers were very conspicuous in their contrasting black-and-white plumage and red beaks, as all the other birds were either white, grey or sandy coloured, with small amounts of black markings.

Shorebirds - these photos show only a small part of the group​

Heading back along the western side of the island I found virtually no birds. The sea was a bit rougher here, and there was a stiff wind blowing which was great for the frigatebirds above, but discouraging for the other birds. And it was becoming cloudy and looked like it might rain at some point.

Frigatebirds​

Halfway along the beach, while I was following monitor tracks in the sand, Sam came past in the boat and said he was taking the others back to the Eclipse, and that he’d come back for me in half-an-hour. I said it would take about 20 minutes for me to get back to our starting point, and he said he'd keep an eye out for me.

And about 20 minutes later I got back and, after photographing a Whimbrel in flight, I thought I would have a quick sit in the water to cool off. However, I discovered that the tide had gone out, so in the shallows I had to wade out a about 50 metres before it was knee-deep and I could sit down and get cool.

Whimbrel​

On my way back to the shore to collect my gear I scared a Blue-ribbon Fantail-ray which scooted away from my feet, and while pursuing it I saw a young Black-blotched Porcupinefish. These were the only fish I could see, but I’m sure if I had a face mask I would have been able to see more, such as sand coloured fish like gobies and blennies. But standing up and looking down into the water with the naked eye pretty much everything else was invisible.

Shortly afterwards, Sam arrived and took me back to the Eclipse. Campbell Islet, although tiny, produced 22 species for me including six Lifers (although I don’t really count the White-eye or the Monarch as I didn’t really see them, just glimpsed movement in the shrubbery and heard their calls). It was a very well-spent 90 minutes.

And that night, we had so much Spanish Mackerel for dinner we were all stuffed and barely had room for dessert!

Tomorrow: Ugar Island



Hix

 

Hix,
Do you take pages and pages of notes in the field or do you keep a diary that you add to at the end of the day? The detail in your report is awesome. I've found that keeping detailed field notes tends to keep my head down and not up where it should be. I try to quickly add field notes as I go but at the end of the day I can't read my own short hand.

 

I don't have time to take notes, nor enough hands. But I take a lot of photographs, and I generally have a good memory about things and places and sequences (but not actual numbers in most cases). My photos record times and can be placed in chronological sequence to help jog my memory. And usually, at the end of the day, I make some brief notes about what I've done that day in a journal.

The first few posts in this thread were written and posted on the day it happened (or thereabouts), but time and internet connections made it difficult to keep that up, and so the majority of the posts were written in the last three weeks.



Hix

 

Day 10 – the Ides of March

Up again early and while we had breakfast, Joe moved the Eclipse over to Ugar Island, and we landed on a beach on the western side at about 7:30am.

Ugar Island (formerly known, and still often referred to, as Stephen’s Island) is the smallest of the inhabited islands in Torres Strait; smallest in both area and population. The roughly circular island is around 850 metres in diameter east to west, and 650 metres north to south. Different sites and reports on the internet states the population is 50 or 70, but one of the government officials living on the island told us it’s actually only about 40 people. The nearest inhabited islands is Erub Island 25 kilometres to the south-east, and Daru Island (part of PNG) and the PNG mainland around 60 kilometres to the north-west. So it’s not just small, it’s remote. And being this small, Ugar doesn’t have an airport, the only way to visit is by boat.

To give some of you an idea of how out-of-the-way this island is: eBird records 74 checklists and 141 species from Boigu Island, and Saibai has 43 checklists and 127 species. Ugar Island didn’t have a single checklist or observation, historical or otherwise, until mine was uploaded. (Needless to say, Campbell Island was the same).

Ugar Island is different from the other islands we visited in that it is a volcanic Island formed during the Pleistocene, with a bedrock of basalt, and rising to around 30 metres above sea-level. With fertile soils, this has resulted in Ugar having a very different vegetation assemblage from the other islands we had visited and this is one reason why Richard (the tour leader) wanted to visit the island. He had heard it is the only Australian island in the Strait with small pockets of rainforest which he thought might attract some of the rainforest dwelling birds from the PNG mainland. So this was an exploratory visit to see if it is worth visiting again in the future.

Ugar Island​

We landed on a small sand spit on the western tip of the island which had some Whimbrels, Lesser Sandplovers, Red-necked Stints, Common Terns and Little Terns sitting on the sand. As we left the beach Biggles found, beside the path and half-buried in the sand, a large shell– a Triton Conch shell! For those not aware, Tritons are very large shells, like the ones you see in movies that a villager blows through like a horn. And when alive the snail that lives in the shell feeds upon Crown-of-Thorns Starfish.

Shorebirds​

There were some mangroves on the shoreline but only extending ten metres or so back from the beach. As soon as we started walking up hill the vegetation changed. We passed the island’s rubbish dump, and in the foliage around the tip we saw Olive-backed Sunbirds and Golden-headed Cisticolas. Wandering away from the group I spied my first Spectacled Monarch in a clump of bamboo.

Golden-headed Cisticola​

Spectacled Monarch​

With the sun coming up, and looking like a glorious day with a cloudless sky, the temperature started to rise. Heading further up the hill we came across Dollarbirds and Ashy-bellied White-eyes, while frigatebirds soared in the skies above. I was particularly glad to get the White-eyes because, along with the Spectacled Monarch I could now count them both as Lifers; I had only heard them on Campbell the day before, and so I couldn’t really count them at the time (my rules).

Dollarbird​

Ashy-bellied White-eye (aka Pale White-eye)​

At spots that looked good for birds we would stop for 10 or twenty minutes to see what we could find and what might be flying past. And then we’d move on.

Birding on Ugar​

Following a path downhill we came upon one of the southern beaches with a picnic area and stopped to have our morning tea which Em had already prepared for us. Venturing out onto the beach we saw another couple of Lesser Sandplovers, a Grey-tailed Tattler, a Pacific Golden Plover, and a pair of Beach Stone-curlews in a stone fish trap looking for crabs. In one of the trees a Nankeen Night Heron was roosting, and an Eastern Reef Heron was perched on a vertical pole set in the ocean, clearly looking for fish. And sitting on one of the basalt boulders making up part of a fish trap was a Bar-shouldered Dove. I don’t know why but the dove seemed a bit out-of-place: I usually see Bar-shoulders in the forest, either in a tree or foraging on the ground, not sitting on a rock at the beach.

Beach​

Beach Stone-curlew​

Nankeen Night Heron​

Bar-shouldered Dove​

After twenty minutes or so we went back up the hill and retraced some of our steps, finding more Dollarbirds, White-eyes, Monarchs, Doves, Sunbirds and Golden Plovers. In the centre of the island is a water reservoir, similar to the ones we’d seen on Boigu and Saibai, but much smaller, and walking around on the concrete apron was a single Common Sandpiper.

The time now was around 10:30. So far we had spent our time on paths in the bush and hadn’t visited the residential part of the island; after all, it was a Sunday morning and the locals might not have appreciated a relatively large group of birders wandering through town at an indecent hour. (You might not think that ten birders is a large group, but considering that with a total population of 40, our group was effectively a quarter of the island’s resident population).

We ventured into the small town/village, which is on the highest part of the island, on the eastern side, and one of the first things we heard was a Red-Headed Honeyeater male. He was calling from the top of a large tree and it took us a few minutes to actually see him. Then someone noticed there were actually two in the tree. They were high up and hopping around amongst the foliage, so just not ideal for photography.

Earlier this year I downloaded the eBird Mobile app to my phone and I’ve been using it quite a bit, especially on this trip. I opened the app to add the honeyeaters to the checklist and one of the Honeyeaters suddenly flew down from the tree onto a garden fence in a perfect spot for a picture. But I need both hands to steady the camera so I had to put my phone in my pocket to free up my left hand. It didn’t go into my pocket easily, and although it took a second or two, it was still too long. Just as I had focussed and was depressing the shutter button the bird flew off an all I got was a red blur in flight. To say I was frustrated is putting it mildly!

We continued through the town and, following one of the roads, something suddenly flew past me at head height and gave a loud squawk before landing in a tree further down the road. Other birders were already near the tree when it called and they saw where it landed, so I didn’t have any trouble finding it when I arrived – it looked like a Sacred Kingfisher but some subtle plumage features identified it as a Torresian Kingfisher (recently split from the Collared Kingfisher), and another Lifer for me.

Torresian Kingfisher​

The road wound around the town and then went down a steep hill to a jetty. From here I saw another Whimbrel and a pair of Reef Egrets, one white and one grey. Looking in the water I could make out a Cornetfish just below the surface. This area, in the morning sun, was very picturesque, complete with a rustic two-storey beach shack along the coast.

Back up the hill we followed the road around and through town again (and passing some Crested Terns on rocks in a little sheltered bay). Next to the power station I saw a flash of yellow and some movement in the bushes near a corner of the fence and went down to investigate, thinking it was probably just another sunbird. After a minute of looking but finding nothing, a larger black-and-yellow bird flew into a shrub, alighting on a branch briefly before flying off, but I got a good enough look to know it was a Mangrove Golden Whistler, another Lifer for me. It flew into a tree a for a few seconds before flying off again before I could get a photo.

Leaving the town we went back to the forest and sat down to wait and see what birds came past. More White-eyes, Monarchs, Bar-shouldered Doves, and Sunbirds. A trio of Channel-billed Cuckoos flew overhead. After a time I wandered back to where we had seen the Red-headed Honeyeaters and waited to see if it appeared, but after twenty minutes with no sign of them I returned to the rest of the group.

I was just updating numbers on the eBird app when another Mangrove Golden Whistler flew into a tree right in front of me and perched on a branch in the full sun, only five metres away. Once again I fumbled putting my phone away and as I was focussing on the whistler it flew away. Silently I had a little temper tantrum directed at my bloody phone, as that was two species of which I had missed getting a photo due to the phone. Very annoyed!

It was now after midday so we walked back down the hill to the picnic spot by the beach to have lunch and a well-deserved drink. There was a bench that we could sit on, some of us went onto the beach and sat on the sand. And then someone on the beach saw a gecko which ran from a piece of driftwood under somebody’s foot, which they instinctively raised and the lizard then ran across the sand towards a tree but stopped on something in its path, which happened to be me coming down to see the gecko they were all yelling about. I saw him heading towards me and I stopped and remained still as the lizard ran onto my foot. Photos were quickly taken, except by me because I wasn’t in a good position, and the attention spooked the gecko so he ran up the outside of my pants, sheltering under the flap that covered a pocket. When I tried to remove him, he shot out and round onto my back and tried to squeeze between my belt and the pants, but I was able to catch him and pull him out without him dropping his tail. I took a couple of quick shots held in my hand and then put him down and took some more photos of him on the sand, and then on a tree. Not really sure what he is but fairly certain it's a Gehyra, probably Gehyra dubia which is found on the island (although I didn’t expect to find them on the beach!).

Gecko​

Another lizard seen on the tree trunks was the Striped Snake-eyed Skink (Cryptoblepharus virgatus) which I’d already seen on Saibai and Campbell.

Sitting down and eating the remains of my burger (I stopped mid-meal because of the gecko) a Mangrove Golden Whistler flew into a shrub about a foot of the ground, right in front of me about two metres away. It was under the tree and the foliage cast heavy shadows and made the area dark, so photography required a slow exposure, but the bird soon flew to better area and actually sat in a shaft of sunlight at one stage, so I was finally able to get some half-decent photos.

Mangrove Golden Whistler​

After a while I decided to go for a swim. The locals had told us there were no crocodiles here and the water looked very inviting, but it turned out to be shallow and only about knee-deep. The water changed colour about 100 metres from the shore, from an aqua to a deeper blue with browny colours beneath the surface, indicating deeper water so I waded out in that direction. When I got there I found the brown colour was not the edge of a reef as I thought, but a bed of brown seaweed, and the water was just as shallow. However, I did see a large stingray swimming away. As the deep water was clearly a considerable distance away I decided to make the best of what I had and lay down in the warm waters, belly down, and started making my way back to sure by pulling myself along the bottom with my hands at a leisurely pace.

Karyl, who enjoys the water too, came out and sat down and we had a chat for about half-an-hour before I realised my shoulders and neck were out of the water and were getting burnt as the sunblock had washed off, so we both waded back into shore. The Beach Stone Curlews and plovers from the morning had left the beach, presumably moving around the island to one less occupied by Homo ornithologia, but we did see flying past a lone Grey Plover with its big black underwing spot clearly visible, a White-winged Black Tern, and an Australian Gull-billed Tern.

About 2:00pm we went back into the interior of the island looking for any species we might have missed in the morning. I went back to the tree where we had seen the Red-headed Honeyeaters and waited again in hope, but in vain. Rejoining the group I was shown a pair of Sunbird chicks that had recently fledged, sitting in a tree waiting for their parents to come and feed them. Judging by their uncoordinated movements trying to move from one branch to another they looked like they had only just come out of the nest. And as usual, White-eyes, Monarchs and Doves were also visible.

Olive-backed Sunbird chick​

Ashy-bellied White-eye​

Bar-shouldered Dove​

Another visit to the tip resulted in more doves and sunbirds, while Lesser Frigatebirds circled in the skies above.

Olive-backed Sunbird female​

Lesser Frigatebird female​

By now it was just after 4:00pm so we returned to the picnic beach and Richard radioed for Joe and Sam to come and collect us. I got a final Lifer from the tender on the way back – scooting away through one metre deep water was a Zebra Shark!

Not long after we got back the Eclipse got underway. It was about almost 200 kilometres to Thursday Island and would take about 12 hours, and so Joe and Sam would take turns at the wheel while we travelled all night, expecting to arrive early in the morning.

As the sun went down a few clouds appeared on the horizon which served to enhance a spectacular sunset, a fitting end to our brief sojourn in some of Australia’s most northerly islands.



Tomorrow: Horn Island (again)



Hix

​

 

I should also point out that each post is limited to only 20 photos. There are more photos to be found in the Torres Strait Island - Wildlife - ZooChat gallery.

Having said that, the next post has no images whatsoever.



Hix

 

Day 11 – 16th March

We slept in a bit this morning and expected to be back at Thursday Island early in the morning, but when we came topside at around 7:00 we saw that we were still a fair way out from Thursday Island. Apparently, during the night the tenders that were being towed behind the boat had come loose, and it was about 2:00am that Joe realised they weren’t there. So they turned around and went looking for them, finding them after about an hour or so, but this added considerably to our travel time. I think we finally ended up arriving around 10:00am.

At the jetty on Horn Island we were collected by the minibus from the Gateway Motel and we all settled back into our rooms and stretched out on full-size beds, a welcome change from the cramped bunks and cabins on the Eclipse. Rob and I shared a room again, and after unpacking we both went down to the store for supplies – I particularly wanted an Express Post mailbag to send some goods home, thereby freeing up space and weight in my luggage (my suitcase was right on the weight limit coming up, and I knew I would be buying a couple of books and souvenirs in Cairns on my way home). Back in my room I shoved my gaiters, a pair of pants, a shirt, a t-shirt and a couple of pairs of socks in the bag, the socks and shirt carefully wrapped around my precious nautilus shell.

After lunch, which we had bought at the shop, Rob decided to relax and read his book, while I went out to the hotel pool and went for a dip. The tepid water was soothing on my burnt nose and hands, and the new sunburn appearing on my neck and shoulders, and I spent quite a while soaking in the pool before relaxing in a chair by the pool, under the shade of a palm tree, and doing some Killer Sudokus. Bob and Karyl were also there, either dozing or chatting, and Bob had his Sudoku book with him too (it seemed to go with him everywhere). Above us, in the palm, we watched a Sunbird that appeared to be making a nest nearby.

The hotel bar opened around 4:00, and dinner was after 6:00, and apart from sorting our clothes and repacking (as we all flew out the next day) we did very little. After a group dinner I spent some time on my laptop because we had a good internet connection, otherwise I think we all did very little apart from Richard who was writing up the trip reports.

Tomorrow: Horn Island to Cairns





Hix

 

Day 12 – 17th March

Two flights per day leave Horn Island for Cairns, one in the morning, and another in the afternoon. I was the only person leaving in the afternoon, so while the others were finishing packing and getting ready to depart I went down to the shop where the Post Office was located and mailed by Express Post bag home. I asked the girl when it would reach Sydney (Express Post is meant to take only one or two days, but in remote areas it takes longer). The girl replied that she wasn’t sure. I asked if it would go out on this afternoon’s flight to Cairns, and she said “I hope so. If it doesn’t, I don’t know when it will go”. I must have looked confused, because she added “They may be stopping all flights”.

This was something I hadn’t considered. While on the Eclipse we had some internet connections, but no television or radio so although we knew about the coronavirus, and had heard it was popping up in different countries, and that people were being isolated, flights were being cancelled and there was talk of countries closing borders to overseas flights, we had no idea how serious the situation had become. I hadn’t even considered they would stop domestic flights.

Back at the hotel I said goodbye to everyone as they boarded the minibus to go out to the airport, and thanked them all for an enjoyable week. Then I jumped online and brought myself up-to-date with the current situation. At this point in time it was recommended that we stop shaking hands or hugging people, but instead greet people by bumping elbows or tapping feet. There was talk of cancelling foreign flights, but nothing had been said about travel across interstate borders. And the phrase “social distancing” wouldn’t be put forward for a few more days. Despite all this, I thought I would be a lot happier once I was in Cairns.

Rob, whom I had been sharing a room (and a cabin) with was planning on going straight to Papua New Guinea as he was booked on a tour with some friends. During the past week on the boat he had been on the phone almost daily to see how the situation was in PNG. Some people had pulled out of the trip, but Rob was still going ahead with it. But with the speed at which responses to the virus were happening, I hoped he wouldn’t get stuck over there.

I was catching the afternoon flight because, when booking my tickets, I thought I might want to go birding on Horn Island before departing. However, I had seen most of the things on Horn Island when I had been here the previous week. But, as I had the time, I decided to do one last quick bird watch around town by walking down to the wharf and back following a circular path. The most common bird was the Masked Lapwing, found on the roads, on sidewalks and in front gardens – I saw 35 in total but there was probably more. In the hibiscus in the hotel front garden I saw three Chestnut Mannikins, but they flew onto powerlines when I approached them. At the wharf I saw a Crested Tern, Seagulls and a Radjah Shelduck in the mangroves with three chicks. In the large trees by the wharf I saw a pair of Helmeted Friarbirds (the north Queensland/Torres Strait subspecies, split by the IOC and now recognised as the Hornbill Friarbird), a Pair of Varied Honeyeaters, and a trio of Sulphur-crested Cockatoos that were, again, strangely silent. Back near the hotel I saw a pair of Spangled Drongos, and a group of eight Rainbow Bee-eaters flew overhead.

Chestnut-breasted Mannikin​

Silver Gulls​

Radjah Shelduck and shelducklings​

Helmeted Friarbird​

Sulphur-crested Cockatoo​

Back in my room I dismantled my camera and finished my packing, and at 1:00 I boarded the hotel’s minibus for the trip to the airport. After checking in I found Rob reading his book on a bench. Apparently, he thought he was on the morning flight, but he was actually booked on the afternoon flight, so he’d been here for the last few hours reading or on the internet. Apparently the PNG tour he was on had been cancelled, so he was looking for something else to do for the next few weeks. “I think I’m going to hire a car in Cairns and drive back home to central NSW, birding along the way” he said. As for me, I'd already planned to stay four days in the Cairns area.

The last few days – travelling to Campbell Islet, Ugar Island, and the two days on Horn Island – the weather had been gloriously hot and sunny all day, but when we arrived in Cairns a few hours later it was overcast with some showers. After collecting our luggage Rob and I said our farewells and I went and hired a car, then drove up into the mountains behind Cairns to Cassowary House outside of Kuranda, where I would be staying for the next few days.

Cassowary House was originally set up by an ornithologist for visiting birdwatchers. It’s set in a lush piece of rainforest that backs onto Kuranda State Forest and is full of birds, including cassowaries which I was keen to see as they would be a lifer for me. After operating Cassowary House for many years, it was sold a few weeks before my visit, and I was the first guest since the new owners took over.

After dropping off my luggage I drove into Kuranda to the supermarket, the only shop open at 7pm (apart from a fish and chip shop) and grabbed some supplies, including dinner, then returned to the lodge. It was raining for most of the night. At around 10pm the rain had eased up to a very light drizzle and I donned my headlamp and ventured outside for a bit of spotlighting. Apart from the usual spiders the only things I saw were two different frogs – a Cogger’s Frog and a Jungguy Frog. As the rain got heavier I returned to my room and called it a night.

Cogger's Frog​

Jungguy Frog​

Tomorrow: the Tablelands



Hix

 

Day 13 – 18th March

Up at 7:00, and was just about to jump in the shower when Ashley called from outside that there was a Cassowary down by the main house. So I grabbed my camera and made my way down. Ash and her husband were inside their house on their balcony having breakfast, but down on the ground next to the house was a fully-grown female Cassowary named Gertie. I knew she was used to people, and so I stood about four metres from her. She was completely unperturbed by me, concentrating more on drinking rainwater from the plastic tub in the garden. I tried taking photos but in the dim light of the rainforest, and with the sun only just coming up, the exposures were very slow. I braced my camera against a tree, which helped a bit. Gertie quietly moved off following one of the paths that led to a cutting through the forest for power lines and I followed her, all the while keeping an eye out for any signs of stress on her behalf. Although there was more light here, I still had to move back to get a full body shot. She was looking around on the ground and in the bushes, probably for something edible, and completely ignoring me. I was standing on one side of the cutting, which was about three metres wide, and after a few minutes she turned and started slowly wandering back up the cutting towards me, but not actually at me. I could have backed away, but chose to remain where I was and observe her. She had done nothing threatening and seemed very calm, and more interested in her environment than me. She came to within a metre of me and stopped, looked me up and down with the same inquisitive attitude she had given the ground and bushes, decided there was nothing edible on my person and then turned and crossed to the other side of the cutting where there was a gap in the vegetation about a metre high that formed a low tunnel. She bent down and entered head first, and very quickly – and silently – disappeared.

Gertie the Cassowary​

I returned to my room filled with the same euphoric satisfaction I’ve had when meeting wild gorillas, chimps, elephants and giraffes. Adult cassowaries can be very dangerous and have caused fatalities, but Gertie and her family have been walking through the grounds of Cassowary Lodge for years, and are used to people being in the gardens. Her mate, named Dad, was currently rearing a pair of chicks from last year’s brood, and he tends to bring the chicks through during the afternoon, however he was not sighted in the few days when I was there. A couple of hundred metres down the road from Cassowary House another male is frequently seen on the road; he’s not habituated, is aggressive, and is known to attack cars that have stopped for a look. I once saw a Casso in Toronto Zoo attacking a steel door, and the force they get into those kicks is frightening - I imagine they could do a lot of damage to a car. So I felt very privileged to have met Gertie in the way I did.

After Gertie had departed I walked around the property looking for the birds I could hear, but not see due to the thick vegetation. A few Sulphur-crested Cockatoos were screaming at other in the tops of the trees, some Yellow-spotted Honeyeaters, a Brush Turkey, a Bar-shouldered Dove and a Pale Yellow Robin was all I actually saw. Something dark on the ground hurried through the vegetation and I suspect it was a Musky Rat Kangaroo which are common here (apparently).

Sulphur-crested Cockatoo


Yellow-spotted Honeyeater


Bar-shouldered Dove​

After breakfast I drove into Kuranda to see it in daylight, then headed out to my first destination up in the Tablelands. I was in the Tablelands a little over five years ago, staying at Kingfisher Lodge outside Julatten, and saw quite a few of the endemic bird species. However, there were a number of birding locations to the south that I had missed, and I thought I would take this opportunity to view some of them.

Twenty kilometres up the highway from Kuranda is Davies Creek Road, and then another six or so kilometres along Davies Creek Rd is a carpark. This is in Davies Creek National Park and is part of the headwaters of the creek. Continuing along the road would get me to Davies Creek Falls but, unfortunately, time did not permit it. From here the creek flows northwards to join the Clohesy River, which itself empties into the Barron River that flows all the way to the Pacific Ocean just north of Cairns airport.

The carpark I stopped at is beside large sheets of flat rock that Davies Creek flows over when in full flow, but now it was just a trickle and I could walk all over the rocks to the other side. There were a few birds here, the most vocal and conspicuous of which were the White-bellied Cuckoo-shrikes. They were feeding in a few trees growing by the banks, and I was able to get good views of them. In trees a little further back were White-throated Honeyeaters, a new species for me, and Yellow Honeyeaters. A small bird in the Eucalypt above turned out to be a Striated Pardalote. I also saw, in the 40 minutes I was there Peaceful Dove, Mistletoebird, Brown Honeyeater and Varied Sittella.

White-bellied Cuckoo-shrike​

White-throated Honeyeater​

Yellow Honeyeater​

Peaceful Dove​

Brown Honeyeater​

My next destination was Granite Gorge Nature Park, as I was told they have habituated Mareeba Rock Wallabies living in the rocks which can be easily seen. It sounds ideal, but it is not how it sounds; not quite, anyway. But getting there became a challenge.

Not knowing the area I was relying on a GPS Sat/Nav to get to the Gorge, and the device started to turn itself off while I was driving. The Search function wasn’t intuitive, and it kept saying it had no power and would shut down, even though it was plugged into the cigarette lighter. Then I would have to pull over and manually turn it on again. By the time I eventually arrived – by following road signs when I got closer – it had taken about an hour longer than anticipated.

Then came the next surprise: Granite Gorge Nature Park is not a part of the federal or state Parks service, it’s privately owned and set up as a commercial operation. The cost of admission was $13, and for another dollar I could buy wallaby feed (another disappointment – feeding the animals). The woman at the entrance tried to explain something to me which I already knew (I can’t remember what it was, probably some basic biological/zoological tenet) and then gave me a map and pointed out on it everything else in the Nature Park ; there were walks amongst the boulders, the gorge, a swimming hole filled with two species of turtles (which she called Large River Turtle and Sawtooth Turtle) and the exotic birds (which were all in cages and were commonly kept pets like Alexandrine Parrots). I think they also had some lizards in a tank. Partially because of my disappointment, and partially due to frustrations resulting from the GPS and the delay, I’m afraid I was a little short with lady. Not rude, just abrupt.

Entering the park and following the path the rock wallabies were one of the first things I came to. They live on gigantic granite boulders that are clustered through out the park; some boulders are very large, 50 to 100 metres across and easily walked upon. Smaller boulders, some still several metres in diameter, would litter the areas between the larger formations creating a sort of boulder rubble, and it was here that the wallabies lived (or at least, some of them). And as soon as they saw me a number of them came over to see if I had anything for them to eat.

Mareeba Rock Wallabies are a small species (like many of the rock wallabies) and were rather cute. I saw at least three females with joeys in their pouches, and also saw some territorial fighting between males. One unfortunate individual had lost both his ears. In total I counted about two dozen individuals in this small area in front of me, and there could have been many more hidden in the rocks. Certainly, for the rest of my stay in the park, I saw rock wallabies at other locations, and they did not seem to be habituated at all.

Mareeba Rock Wallabies​

Needless to say, photography was easy, except when they were right at your feet. After about 15 minutes I decided to see what the rest of the park held. The turtles in the swimming pond were Macquarie Shortnecks (probably the Krefft’s subspecies) and Sawshell Turtles. Very few birds were seen; a Brown Honeyeater, eight Rainbow Lorikeets and a Black Kite soaring on thermals. It was around midday and hot, so sensible birds were doing nothing at this time, except making themselves scarce like sensible birds do.

Macquarie River Turtle​

Following the path back to the entrance I apologised to the lady for being so abrupt when I arrived (because I felt bad about it, I don’t normally behave that way) and explained the problem of the GPS while I bought an ice cream from her. She was quite charming about it and gave me a free tourist map of the whole Tablelands area.

Back at the car I was finishing the ice cream when I saw on the grassy lawns beside the carpark seven Squatter Pigeons foraging with six Peaceful Doves. Squatters were a lifer for me, and these seemed intent on foraging and happily ignored me taking photos.

Squatter Pigeon​

My plan was to head south to Mount Hypipamee National Park, but while watching the Squatters large dark clouds had blocked the sun and were slowly moving across the sky, and driving from Granite Gorge back to the main road it looked more and more like it was going rain heavily. A few kilometres from the Gorge I drove past a house that had about a dozen Helmeted Guineafowl in the front yard and crossing the road to a neighbour’s property. I realised these weren’t pets, because in this area there are some reasonable-sized groups of these birds that are feral – and are also considered tickable on Australian life-lists. So I stopped and took a few photos of them. Not long after that it started to rain – and it came down in buckets, as it so often does in the tropics. It looked like it had set in for the afternoon and so, throwing the GPS in the back seat and following street signs, I reluctantly drove back to Kuranda and Cassowary House.

Feral Helmeted Guineafowl​

It continued to rain all afternoon, and into much of the night.

Tomorrow: More of the Tablelands



Hix

 

Day 14 – 19th March - - - PART 1

At 7:00am I went back down to see if I could get some better photos of Gertie, but she didn’t show. I waited for around half an hour, wandering on the paths through the forest on the property but apart from some more cockatoos and Yellow-spotted Honeyeaters I saw nothing else.

After breakfast, at around 8:00, I left and drove south-west again on the highway towards Mareeba thirty kilometres away, this time turning off onto Tinaroo Creek Rd, then onto Cobra Road which in turn led to Emerald Falls Rd. Emerald Creek Falls was not my destination, but it was in the western part of Dinden Forest Reserve which adjoins Dinden National Park, and I’d heard the area was good for birds.

The roads leading up to the reserve are agricultural with tea, sugar cane and other plantations prominent. While driving along Cobra Road I saw by the side of the road next to a sugar plantation an adult Australian Bustard. I’ve seen wild bustards before, generally from a distance (resulting in very average photographs), so this wasn’t a lifer for me, but it was close to the road so I turned around and drove back, and got my camera ready. The bird didn’t seem to be overly perturbed when I stopped the car and took some photos through the window, so I slowly got out of the car and made my way towards it, at which point it took much more interest in what I was doing. As I was close enough for some good images, I took a few shots, and then left. When I finally saw them on my computer I was quite happy with them.

Australian Bustard​

The Emerald Creek Falls carpark I came to in the reserve seemed a good place to stop for birds – I came to this conclusion from all the birds I could see flying around, and all the calls I heard! The carpark is beside the creek which is lined with a eucalypt forest, but the carpark area was surrounded by short lawns interspersed with trees, and on the other side of the road was native grasses and shorter trees and shrubs, more of an open scrubland, that was adapted to growing on the sandy substrate.

The first birds I saw on the grasses and some exposed sand were a group of five Double-bar Finches, small and timid, but foraging around quite happily for seeding grasses. In the tree next to where I parked my car were a number of honeyeaters, and after a short time I was able to discern Brown, Yellow, Yellow-faced and White-throated Honeyeaters.

Doublebar Finch


Yellow Honeyeater


Yellow-faced Honeyeater


White-throated Honeyeater​

Beside the honeyeater tree (which had birds in it continually for the whole time I was here) was a small stream that crossed the car park and fed into Emerald Creek. It wasn’t running at present, but water from yesterdays’ rain had left a few pools here and there, and as I watched some Peaceful Doves drinking I caught sight of a Pale-headed Rosella further back in the long grasses. This species was a Lifer for me, but unfortunately the only photo I could get was of the bird on the ground with its back to me.

Peaceful Dove


Pale-headed Rosella​

The carpark was a couple of hundred metres long and at the other end, on the forest edge, I found some old, familiar friends: Eastern Yellow Robins, Rufous Whistlers, a Grey Shrike-thrush and ten Red-browed Firetail Finches. Like the Double-bars, the Firetails were feeding on seeding grasses. But also here, and not so common for me, were Australasian Figbirds, a Brown-backed Honeyeater, a juvenile Leaden Flycatcher and a Rufous Shrike-thrush (recently split from the Little Shrike-thrush). Walking back to my car I passed the Doublebars again, which had moved further along the lawns and increased in number to sixteen, and after checking the honeyeater tree, I photographed a Willie Wagtail that was hopping around the car looking for something edible.

Eastern Yellow Robin


Rufous Whistler​

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Red-browed Firetail Finch


Australasian Figbird



Brown-backed Honeyeater


Leaden Flycatcher juvenile


Little (Rufous) Shrike-thrush


Willlie Wagtail​

Just as I was getting into my car I saw, back where I had just come from, a kingfisher fly down onto the ground to catch something, and then fly back up into a tree. Hurrying back I found three Forest Kingfishers which stayed for about twenty minutes before flying off.

Forest Kingfisher​

I had only planned on staying here for half an hour at the most (less if there had been no birds) but when I finally left it was 10:30, and I’d been here for about two hours! It was, as far as I was concerned, a great place to watch birds.

Doublebar Finches​

All morning the skies had been clear and blue, the sun was shining and warm, but as I made my way to my next birding location the clouds rolled in again and by the time I reached Hasties Swamp there was a light drizzle falling.

(NOTE: Because we are only permitted 20 photos per post, the rest of this day will be detailed in the next post.)



Hix

 

Day 14 – 19th March - - - PART 2

Hasties Swamp is essentially a lake that is usually good for waterbirds. Driving into the small carpark I saw there was already another car present (at Emerald Creek I was the only person there). A Brown Cuckoo-dove and Willie Wagtail greeted me as I parked my car and made me way to the enormous bird hide.

Brown Cuckoo-dove


Willie Wagtail​

The Bird Hide is a large wooden structure, and is two storeys high. As I approached it I could hear voices coming from above, so I entered the ground floor level keeping very quiet. Scanning the lake with my binoculars I could only see a few birds – two or three each of Coot, Pacific Black Duck, Hardhead, Swamphen and a single Australasian Grebe. I heard one of the voices above saying “Well, if there aren’t many birds here, then there aren’t many birds here”. I got the impression from what I could hear that there is normally far more birds present and it just appeared that today there wasn’t. A few minutes later I heard them leave, and once gone I went outside and up the staircase at the back of the hide to the floor above. The elevation gave better views of the swamp and I saw more a few more of the Black Ducks, Coot, Hardhead and Swamphens, plus eight Grey Teal, four Wandering Whistle-ducks and about ten Plumed Whistle-ducks. On the other side of the lake I could make out a white egret, but couldn’t tell if it was a Great or an Intermediate because it was way too far away.

Hardhead


Australian Swamphen


Australasian Grebe


Plumed Whistleducks​

There wasn't much more to see at Hasties, and I had a bit of ground to cover in the afternoon so I left after only about 45 minutes. I had to go to Topaz to visit someone, and they suggested the Nerada Tea plantation which is open to the public and has a Visitor's Centre, but also has Lumholtz's Tree Kangaroos in the trees out the front of the property. Lumholtz's were one of my targets as I've seen kangaroos, wallabies, quakkas, rock wallabies and pademelons in the wild, but never a Tree 'Roo. However, the Nerada plantation was closed (probably due to rain and coronavirus) and although I looked I couldn't see any macropods, arboreal or otherwise. But I did see a pair od Bush Stone-curlews with two chicks sheltering under one of the adults.

Bush Stone-curlews​

My final destination today was Mt Hypipamee National Park, also known as Crater National Park. Despite the rain I still wanted to visit because I had heard it is good for Lumholtz Tree Kangaroos, although in this weather (and after Nerada) I really wasn’t expecting to see anything much.

The rain got heavier but had eased up to a drizzle by the time I arrived. A child’s birthday party was taking place under a shelter in the carpark, so the carpark was almost full. A female Brush Turkey was wandering around the carpark, I presume hoping to get something to eat dropped by the kids.

Australian Brush Turkey female​

The vegetation here is rainforest, so even if the sun had been shining it would have still been dark under the tall trees making photography difficult. But with the heavy cloud cover, photography was even harder. However, unlike Hasties Swamp, there was plenty of birdlife here. At the beginning of the path that led to “The Crater”, at the edge of the forest where the trees were a bit more open, I saw a Rufous Fantail, a Black-faced Monarch and a Spectacled Monarch, all zipping around the way they do. There was also a juvenile Bower’s Shrike-thrush foraging halfway up one of the enormous trees. Venturing into the forest I came upon a trio of small birds I had never seen before, and despite the dim light I managed to get a few half decent photos (and a lot of very blurred ones) as they hopped along the ground looking amongst the leaf-litter for a meal. Back at Cassowary House I later identified them as Grey-headed Robin (another lifer).

Bower's Shrike-thrush
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Grey-headed Robin​

The rain started getting heavier so I hurried back to my car, doing my best to protect my camera from the rain, but it stopped just as I arrived. So, pushing my luck, I went back to the path and tried again to get photos of the Monarchs as they flitted rapidly around the massive tree trunks. And then, while looking for a bird that was calling in the treetops, I saw my first wild tree-kangaroo.

It was a stocky, fluffy looking Lumholtz climbing down a thick woody vine (or liana) from high up in the trees and luckily there was a few gaps in the foliage where I could get unobstructed views of it for photography. Although the vine was beside the tree’s trunk, the ‘roo had chosen the vine to climb down, which was something I’d not heard of them doing – I always assumed they climbed down trunks using their claws to support them as I had seen captive ones do. Then again, captive ones are lucky if they have tall trees, but I’ve never seen vines or vertical ropes in exhibits before.

Lumholtz's Tree Kangaroo​

The ‘roos method of climbing down was interesting to watch: his front paws grabbed the vine, one above the other, and his hind feet had the soles pressed together on either side of the vine, and he lowered himself by bringing his forepaws down and gripping the vine, and then lowering his hindfeet and then regripping the vine. It reminded me of the Pacific islanders who climb and descend coconut trees in a similar fashion, although the islanders are generally a bit more energetic about it. But the ‘roo was taking his time and occasionally stopped to look around and have a rest. As he approached the ground the foliage became thicker, and I lost my view but by following the path into the forest I was able to find him again, until he reached the ground and whereupon he promptly vanished amongst the undergrowth.

Despite the rain, I was in a very good mood at this point and decided the follow the path through the forest to ‘The Crater’. I was expecting something similar to the craters I had seen elsewhere, like Ngorongoro and Ngurdoto in Tanzania, Wolf Crater in Western Australia, or Diamond Head in Hawaii – a roughly circular depression in the ground ranging from a few hundred metres to several kilometres in a diameter, ringed with steep walls up to a few hundred metres in height. This was not one of those craters. It’s more like a ginormous sinkhole in the ground, but is actually the remains of a volcanic vent from millions of years ago. According to the signage nearby, the body of water I could see at the bottom is 58 metres below the viewing platform, but the water itself is 73 metres deep. A very deep hole.



Heading back to the carpark it started to rain again, but it eased up halfway back and I caught sight of something very black moving on the side of a tree up near the canopy. Obviously a bird as it flew to another tree I suddenly realised this was a male Riflebird, which belongs to the Bird-of-Paradise family. There are four members of this family in Australia, three Riflebirds and a manucode, and this was Victoria’s Riflebird, predominantly black with a metallic blue sheen on the crown, tail and breast, but with no sun to reflect it the blue areas looked as black as the rest of the bird. This was a lifer for me, and my first Paradisea in Australia. Although it never came down closer to ground level, I did manage to get a couple of questionable shots of it. Then the rain returned, the bird disappeared, and I hurried on toward the carpark.

Victoria's Riflebird male​

Just as I reached the edge of the forest the rain stopped, and so did I. I was considering whether it was worth staying here a bit longer or returning to Kuranda when there was a flurry of wings and feathers as a pair of Brush Turkeys, one chasing the other, raced past and jumped onto some low branches right in front of me. Then the male, which was lower than the female, started doing something I’d not seen before. He would inhale air into his throat pouch and then would drop his head in a controlled movement until it was pointing downwards, which forced the air out of the pouch resulting in a groaning sound. He did this several times, before hopping onto some higher branches towards the female. I don’t know whether this was territorial or a prelude to mating, but the female wanted nothing to do with him, flew down to the ground and raced off into the undergrowth with the male in hot pursuit. I had not seen this groaning behaviour before (in fact, I don’t think I’ve ever heard a Brush Turkey make any sound) and it was interesting to note that although the pouch noticeably filled with air, it was nowhere near capacity and certainly not bulging like you would expect with, say, a siamang.

Australian Brush Turkey male​

I was noticing a pattern with the weather here in Far North Queensland: clear skies and sunny in the morning, the clouds appearing around 11:00 and then the rain starting about midday and lasting the rest of the day and much of the night. The rain put a significant damper on things, and I didn’t want to expose myself to too much rain in case I got a cold. At this point in the coronavirus invasion anyone with a sneeze or a cough was viewed with suspicion at best, or with fear at worst. There were a few other places I wanted to visit – the crater lakes of Lake Eacham and Lake Barrine in particular - but as the rain started again I decided to go back to Kuranda and download my photos to my computer.

Along the way I stopped at a place recommended to me – the Emerald Creek Ice Creamery. Set beside the highway, but several kilometres from town, I was the only person there when I arrived and despite it being the afternoon, I was something like the third person to visit that day. Apparently, business was bad due to people not travelling because of the coronavirus (this was before state borders were shut, but people had already decided to avoid going out). I spent about 20 minutes there and as well as ice cream bought some extremely decadent fudge they make, some biltong also made on site, and some locally produced liquorice. It was all very tasty and after eating the first fudge (I bought three) I felt like I was putting on an extra kilo just looking at the other two!

After stopping in Kuranda for petrol and another Express Post Box from the Post Office, I returned to Cassowary House and relaxed for the rest of the (rainy) afternoon.

Tomorrow: Kuranda and Cairns



Hix

 

Day 15 – 20th March

Again I was up at 7:00 and out looking for Gertie, and again I was disappointed. So I had breakfast and finished packing, checking out around 9:00 and heading into Kuranda to the Post Office. And it was then I decided Cairns could wait an hour or so, and I went to Birdworld.

I was really surprised at the lack of people and traffic in Kuranda. For a touristy town in school holidays it was very quiet. The Markets were open but they had no customers, and the only tourists I saw were a Japanese couple going into the Koala Gardens. The Coronavirus was hitting businesses hard. In fact, I was the only person in Birdworld for the half-hour I was there. The girl on the gate told me any jewellery or piercings/studs/rings might be removed or damaged by some of the birds, and although I don’t have any of those they suggested my metal watch was at risk, so I took it off and put it in my pocket. I later realised the watch was the least of my worries.

I have added my review of my visit to Birdworld as a separate thread found at Birdworld Kuranda - a quick review [BirdWorld Kuranda] . This was to save space and make it easier to find for anyone looking just for information about Birdworld.

Kuranda was just as quiet as when I had entered Birdworld. Leaving Kuranda and the mountains I drove down the winding road back to Cairns, 30 odd kilometres away.

Check-in at my hotel wasn’t for a while yet so I stopped at Cattana Wetlands on the northern outskirts of town, arriving at around 10:45. The weather was clear and sunny, and warm, and I tried to keep out of the sun because my sunburnt nose wasn’t sore anymore and I didn’t want it to get burnt again. My hands were the same, and I had realised this morning that my jaw wasn’t sore anymore either, so the antibiotics may have done the trick.

Cattana Wetlands is an 80 hectare reserve consisting of six lakes. Formerly a sugar cane plantation and sand-mining quarry the reserve has been rehabilitated with weeds being removed, 70,00 plants being planted, paths and birdwatching hides constructed, and a boardwalk through one of the last Feather Palm Forest remnants in the Cairns area. The large lakes attract a variety of birds, and not just waterbirds. My previous visit here six years ago had resulted in only 23 species of birds, but 7 of them were Lifers, and another four would have been Lifers had I not seen them in Cairns earlier that morning.

Probably because of the heat and the fact it was approaching the middle of the day, I didn’t see as many birds as I expected (only 18 in two-and-a-half hours). What I did notice was that the Cairns weather followed the same pattern as the weather in the Tablelands – when arrived it was sunny with clear skies, but some time after 11:00 the clouds rolled in and then the rain started, lightly at first, pretty much bang-on midday.

The common Cairns birds were mostly what I saw – Masked Lapwings, Willie Wagtails, Yellow Honeyeaters, Yellow Orioles, Bar-shouldered Doves, Peaceful Doves, Spangled Drongos, Helmeted Friarbirds, Rainbow Bee-eaters, Sunbirds, Welcome Swallows and Comb-crested Jacanas. However, on Jabiru Lake – the largest of the lakes – while sheltering from the rain in a Bird Hide I saw on a small island in the lake a Black Bittern, my only Lifer for the day. It was obscured by tree branches but it was clearly a Black Bittern and when the rain stopped I went around the other side of the lake to see the other side of the island to get a better view, but the island was too far away.

Masked Lapwing​

Yellow Honeyeater​

Yellow Oriole​

Bar-shouldered Dove


Spangled Drongo


Rainbow Bee-eater


Australasian Figbird


Comb-crested Jacana


Black Bittern​

I only saw ten other people in the Wetlands, and one couple I spoke to hadn’t had too much luck with the birds either. I showed them the Bittern and they showed me a White-lipped Tree Frog they had seen, sitting on the trunk of a tree growing in the shallow waters of the lake.

White-lipped Tree Frog​

The rain was making photography difficult and the birds weren’t being too co-operative either, and on the boardwalk in the Feather Palm Forest I was bombarded by hordes of large mosquitos, so I finally left the park and checked into my hotel, the Doubletree by Hilton next to the Cairns Aquarium (where I had stayed on my way up to Torres Strait).

In the late afternoon the skies cleared and I drove to Centenary Lakes, but saw very little there apart from the usual Lorikeets and Torresian Imperial Pigeons. A couple of birders from the local birdwatching group were also there and weren’t having too much joy either. They told me that this time of year, with all the rains, most of the birds have dispersed. My previous visit had been in a December, before the rains, and at that time of year the birds tend to congregate at the lakes as there is only a few large bodies of water around, Centenery Lakes being one. However, I did get to see large clouds of Metallic Starlings – several hundred of them – flying in to roost in the tops of some of the trees. While discussing these with the birdwatchers I mentioned having seen them in Torres Strait, and they said the day before they had been at the Esplanade with another couple of birders who had just returned from Torres Strait. A few quick questions and I determined it was Graham and Tom who had been watching waders. I wondered, aloud, if I might bump into them on the Esplanade, but I was told Tom and Graham flew home that morning.

Torresian Imperial Pigeons​

Laughing Kookaburra ​

Pacific Black Ducks​

Sulphur-crested Cockatoo​

Metallic Starlings. The ones with white breasts are juveniles.​

A few hours later, after dinner, I walked down to the Cairns Night Markets which are open every night. Last time I was here there was a very talented glass blower who made some beautiful glass animals and I had purchased a few. At home I had displayed them with other souvenirs (like wooden carvings from Belize, and stone carvings from the Solomon Islands) in a narrow wooden bookcase with glass doors. Some months later one of my pythons had escaped and worked its way behind the bookcase, knocking it over and the glassware all smashed, so on this visit I thought I would replace some of them.

The Night Markets had quite a few people wandering through, but not the numbers I have seen in the past, and the glassblower confirmed business was down by more than 50%. I purchased a Hammerhead Shark mounted on a piece of polished granite, a scorpion and a pair of hummingbirds.

It made a pleasant end to the day.

Tomorrow: the Esplanade and back home.



Hix