Western Qld Kwean-up

By the end of 2021 my Australian list was over 600 and there were almost no destinations left where I could pick up more than a handful of lifers or even a handful of Australian ticks. I also had good numbers of all but two Australian bird families. The exceptions: Buttonquails and Grasswrens.

The latter are particularly desirable because they constitute an endemic family of sweet and characterful but often skulking little gems of the desert. Almost all live in far flung, dry, inhospitable climes, choosing scraggy vegetation like spinifex or lignum or saltbush as their preferred habitat. Real birders birds. They are also not especially well known to science; Grey Grasswren, for instance, was only described in 1968 and only discovered in SA in 1987, while taxonomic splits and lumps of other species are still happening to this day. In South Australia we have 8 of the 13 current species (I guess this speaks to how far-flung and inhospitable we are in SA): Striated, Western, Short-tailed, Thick-billed, Eyrean, Grey, Sandhill and Dusky. I have seen the first 6, but not the last two, and I had seen none of the ones that are not found in SA.

One of the places where I could bag more than a handful of lifers was north-west Qld, well inside the tropics but deep, “deserty” outback country of red earth and spinifex, sparsely populated by redneck station ranchers and FIFO miners. A full third of the potential 9 lifers on offer were Grasswrens, to take my tally at least past the half-way mark for the family: Carpentarian, Kalkadoon (a split from Dusky) and Opalton (an even more recent split from Striated/Sandhill complex). All are possible in relatively short trip to western Qld, it’s just that it’s a bugger to get to. I was amazed when I actually looked at a map at how far Mt Isa is from Brisbane! It’s almost the same distance NW of BNE that BNE is north-east from Adelaide.

In 2021 Mike Potter and I had toyed with the idea of adding days into our Birdsville/Strzlecki trip (see here) but in the end neither of us could justify the extra travel and leave from work that would have been needed to head to grasswren territory from Birdsville, the farthest north we got. In outback terms we were close, but that just meant we were within 700km – about a day’s long drive!

Instead, we tentatively planned a specific trip, and for once a tentative plan turned into an actual trip for the second week of October. But I guess you know that already, because for everyone’s sake it’s just well that I don’t wrote blogs for all my tentative trips that never happen. To save time (and even money, given the cost of fuel these days) we elected to fly to Mt Isa, a mining town in the heart of the Grasswren areas and gateway to the channel country where the dusty Diamantina sources its occasional flows. I had never been to Mt Isa before, but I knew that UK birding mate Steve Young had worked here briefly more than 30 years ago. Back then there was no internet so on his breaks from the mine he birded by bike, without gen and saw sweet FA. His story about a malfunction at the mine bears repeating, though. A bloke burst into the mess hall, covered in oil and shit: “The fucking fucker’s fucking fucked”. “Fuck!” was the only appropriate response, reverberating around the hall as everyone immediately understood what had happened and the gravity of the situation. Fuck knows what had actually happened, but this might just be the only example in the English language of the same word being used as subject, verb, adjective, adverb, and expletive, all in one sentence.

I digress…

Prior to my trip I was in Sydney for some work (and on the weekend helping Erica celebrate her 21^st birthday a mere 12 ½ months after it actually happened), so Mike and I were due to meet in the Qantas lounge at Brisbane airport, and travel together on to Mt Isa. Mike was delayed by a security alert at Adelaide airport, but still made it to the rendezvous in plenty of time. The same could not be said for me. I was originally booked on a 12noon flight to Brisbane, but that was cancelled and I was rebooked on the next flight, one hour later. No dramas. But then once boarded, we were told there was a technical fault and we would have to reboard a new plane. That process took another hour, so by the time we landed in Brisbane, Mike was already on board our flight to Mt Isa. I was able to rush between gates and met him on the plane, to mutual relief. I was hopeful my bag would also make it, and the flight attendant seemed confident. Unfortunately her confidence was misplaced and on arrival in Mt Isa we discovered my bag had not made it.

Still, no immediate dramas. We would be in Mt Isa for two nights, and I always make sure to carry optics in hand-luggage, so our birding would not be compromised. I’d just have collect from the next flight from Brisbane at 8.30am. We called in to Woolies en route to our hotel/motel accommodation for the night, where I picked up essentials like toothbrush and undies to see me through the minor crisis. All was forgotten with an excellent schnitty and cold beer at the hotel.

12 Oct

We planned our first couple of days around trying to see Carpentarian Grasswren, which we expected would be the most difficult of our targets. We had come armed with various gen, but only one site – a mate’s “backup” site – was on land that we were sure we could access. Many of the “traditional” sites have been steadily restricted by the miners who say that birders and their vehicles present a danger to themselves sharing a road with haul trucks. My personal suspicion is just that they perceive birders to be “woke greenies who want to do them out of a job”.

Pre-dawn we headed for one of the “dodgy” sites, but failing to find a key landmark – or come across any haul trucks, mercifully – in the pre-dawn darkness, and the knowledge that we had driven past a sign that said “trespassers will have their bollocks cut off and force-fed to themselves” (or words to that effect) gave us enough jitters that we turned and fled. We’d seen a couple of Spotted Nightjar flush from the road, and it was still very early so we hadn’t really lost anything other than an hour or so of sleep.

The next site along Barkly Hwy was not too far away. We pulled off the highway and walked across a dry creek bed. Although bursting with a great variety of arid-lands birdlife – Red-backed Kingfisher, Budgerigar, Black-tailed Treecreeper, Grey-headed Honey-eater, Grey-fronted Honeyeater, Black-chinned (Golden-backed) Honeyeater, Crested Bellbird, Black-faced Woodswallow – it was initially relatively unpromising as grasswren country. But after only a few minutes’ walk we found ourselves at a spot near a low ridge, covered in green, almost lush-looking spinifex with a few termite mounds scattered about. Just the right habitat, surely? Within seconds I’d heard some squeaking, then simultaneously we both locked onto a superb Carpentarian Grasswren. The deep white throat was obvious and made the ID unequivocal. Mission accomplished and it was still only 7am. We then spent the next 90 minutes with at least two, maybe three birds giving us the run-around as we tried different tactics to get better views and photos. I tried playing their song (“Close to you” seemed appropriate) but they were expert at keeping 40m away; contrary to the lyrics, the birds would in fact disappear, every time we were near. Eventually we left with good views but only distant record shots. Still, this was/is a birding trip, not a photography trip and it had started more or less perfectly: “We’ve only just begun” and already we were “On top of the world”.

We called in at the airport on our way back to Mt Isa to collect my bag, but were greeted with the news that it was in Townsville. Why was my bag in Townsville, you might ask? I certainly did, but the response of the vague desk girls was suitably vague and unhelpful. I presume that someone — or perhaps an algorithm — worked out that sending it via Townsville would mean it arrived into Mt Isa 5 minutes earlier than on the Brisbane flight. However far from being grateful that Qantas had tried to give me an extra 5 minutes with my bag, I was pretty pissed off with the outcome. The morning’s Townsville to Mt Isa service had been turned back soon after take-off and then cancelled. The desk girls suggested returning at 1730 to connect with the afternoon Townsville arrival.

From the airport we drove to Pamela St watertanks, on Mt Isa’s eastern edge, where we hoped for our next grasswren target, Kalkadoon. We were greeted by my second lifer of the day: Spotted Bowerbird (not great, but tickable views) followed minutes later by my third: a small flock of finches flew past as soon as we’d arrived and their call was unfamiliar to me. I called out: “These could be Painted Finches”, and sure enough Mike was first to find where they had landed and they were indeed superb Painted Finches. These are stunning black red and white birds of the arid interior, rare in SA but fairly common in western Qld and central NT. One of our birds this morning was even obliging enough to pose against a nice distant background. We dipped on Kalks here, and though the day was getting on, we decided to try another site with a recent ebird record Telstra Hill, about 5km east of Isa.

The conditions as we arrived on top of the hill, with superb views in all directions, were starting to be less promising. Although the day had dawned still and cool, which was good for our Carp finding, it was now nearly noon, getting hotter and had become quite blustery. This would make hearing a squeaky skulker all the more difficult!

Nevertheless I played the contact call and a minute or two later a thin, faint, reply seemed to drift up from below a ledge to our east. I played again, and it came closer. We both scanned intently and our efforts were rewarded as a cracking Kalkadoon Grasswren – lifer number 4 for the day – hopped onto a rock below us. We were even able to get passable photos. As we drove slowly down the steep, very rough track flushed with the success of our morning, I heard another squeak through the window and stopped, just in time to see a Kalk duck behind a big clump of spinifex just a metre or two off the road. We piled out of the car and over the next couple of minutes enjoyed a family of four more Kalkadoon Grasswrens circling around us, and even hopping onto the road to check us out. Kalk is a mostly uniform brown-streaked grasswren without the interesting facial pattern of most of the family, but the female has lovely chestnut flanks which showed nicely in our improved very close views. Sadly, although one decided to sit proudly on a nicely lit, rocky ledge, close by, it was slightly behind some annoying spinifex spikes, as you can see in the pic below. Standing a few metres to my right, Mike managed much nicer, cleaner pics.

I’d begun the trip with three targets for Mt Isa and barely 18 hours into the trip I had four out of three.

We used the hot afternoon hours to drive along the banks of Lake Moondarra, where we had a good selection of waders and waterbirds, and padded the trip list nicely. Highlights included various several Brolga, Spotted Bowerbird, Paperbark Flycatcher, Rufous-throated Honeyeater, Plumed Whistling-Duck and numerous (feral) Indian Peafowl.

Back at the airport to collect my bag from the arriving Townsville flight, the vague desk girls first suggested the bags were still being unloaded, then, long after all had been collected by the incoming passengers they changed their story: my bag had apparently been unloaded in Cloncurry by mistake. There was another Reid (actually Read) also missing a bag from yesterday’s Brisbane flight, and our bags had received the wrong tags in Townsville. His was supposed to be offloaded in Cloncurry, but instead they took mine and his came to Mt Isa. A case of human error being compounded by further human error compounded by vagueness and incompetence. Sigh.

I had not stressed about the bag up to this point, but I was told it would come in tomorrow on the afternoon flight that stops by Cloncurry – but by that time we expected to be long gone from Mt Isa. Potential disaster! Fortunately at this point Mike’s quick thinking and better geography (he was a geography teacher after all) realised that we would be going through Cloncurry late morning. If we could make sure the bag stayed there and was not sent anywhere stupid, we could collect on our way to Winton. A grand plan, though also not without stress because we were unable to contact Cloncurry, and we knew that once we left Mt Isa neither of us would have mobile phone signal. 

More cold beers and a good steak helped take my mind off the stresses of the bag.

13 Oct

We had allowed this morning for a further attempt at Carpentarian. We no longer needed it, but I persuaded Mike we should have another crack anyway, hoping for better photo ops. We tried playing the song – “Yesterday  once more” seemed appropriate in the circumstances – but sadly though not surprisingly, the behaviour today was no different from yesterday and we departed having seen a pair of Carps again (probably the same ones), but without even any record shots.

There was one more site we hoped to visit before leaving the Mt Isa region. Around 8.30 we followed the 4WD track just south of Telstra Hill through spinifex covered hills to Warrigal Waterhole. Not far from the car, as we walked a rough track to the waterhole, I heard a Spinifexbird, another of my potential lifer targets. But it stayed buried deep in the spinifex and we could not track it down. The waterhole itself still held a bit of water, though we had given up the best hours trying for pics of Carpentarian Grasswrens (sorry Mike!) and there was not much happening at or near the water. While Mike stayed on a bit longer in the hope that something good would come down for a drink, I returned to the Spinifexbird spot, and managed a brief, but tickable view of the bird for lifer #5, Spinifexbird. I initially saw something in flight low across the slope then land on a big clump of spinifex. As I slowly processed that I was now seeing a Spinifexbird for the first time, it dived deep down into the clump. It failed to emerge.

Now it was time to head east to make sure we got to Cloncurry before noon, when we’d been told the airport closes. A couple of hours later, filled with trepidation, we pulled up outside the small and very empty looking terminal building. The only other people seemingly for miles were a pair of women pushing wheelie bins. One called out: “Are you Ian?”. Phew! She escorted me into the vacant terminal and to a small office, where my bag was propped against a desk.

Cloncurry to Winton is another 350km, so most of the afternoon was spent just driving. We stopped at Combo Waterhole, just a few km diversion from the highway, to break up the drive. This series of channel billabongs is reputedly where Banjo Paterson got the inspiration for the words to Waltzing Matilda, and the Landsborough Hwy that links Cloncurry and Winton has the alternative nickname, “Matilda Way”. The heat was intense but there were lots of birds hanging around the channels, especially Budgies, Cockatiel, Paperbark Flycatchers and White-breasted Woodswallows.

We rolled into Winton, and once we’d checked into our comfortable motel and grabbed fuel and groceries for tomorrow, we still had about an hour of daylight left. At the various water treatment ponds on the outskirts of town we hoped for Plum-headed Finch, which would be a lifer for Mike. Dozens of Australian Pratincoles were running across the tracks and breeding in the paddocks, but we failed to connect with PHF. A pair of birds at the cooling ponds on the eastern side of town might have been our target, but in the dim evening light and far away we could not be sure. They flew off high and distant before we could get a closer look. However at least we now understood the lay of the land, and would have a further evening and morning in which to locate the finches.

Tattersall’s Hotel, one of 4 pubs in this tiny outback town, was excellent for our evening “debrief”: walking distance from our motel, friendly and very efficient bar staff, buzzing atmosphere of locals and visitors alike, and (naturally) cold beer and excellent schnitties. What more can you want from a country pub?

14 Oct

In terms of its importance for the trip, today (Day 3) was up there with our first full day. On paper, it had the potential to deliver 4 lifers for me and 3 for Mike: Rufous-crowned Emuwren and Opalton Grasswren for both of us, PHF for Mike, and in addition, Hall’s Babbler and Chestnut-breasted Quail-thrush for me. It was a little worrying to wake to the sound of strong winds buffeting the motel. Not what you want when searching for skulkers.

We set out for Lark Quarry in the dark along the unsealed roads south of Winton. Heavy rain over the previous week had closed many outback roads in western Qld, but fortunately the ones we needed were still open, though restricted to 4WD only. As the sun rose we drove through large clouds of Budgies that chattered in their thousands , flushing from roadside roosts as we trundled past. 90km later we pulled up at the turnoff to Lark Quarry, marked by a tall comms tower and according to ebird, a reliable spot for both emuwren and grasswren. Unlike our previous two days when the thermometer had hit high 30s, today had a wintery feel. The strong breeze had persisted, and there was a full cloud-cover in the sky and a chill in the air.

A squeak right outside the car door had me going, but turned out to be just a Purple-backed Fairywren. We walked a big loop through green-looking spinifex, not finding either of the more desirable wrens, but as we tried to pin down a Crimson Chat, my attention was drawn above my head and a pair of Grey Falcons drifted over.

A few km further along the track into Lark Quarry we stopped again to explore some promising looking spinifex. We later realised this was more or less the exact ebird hotspot called “Lark Quarry Road, 400 metres north”. Barely 50m north of the road I detected a high-pitched contact call and after just a few seconds of playback a sweet, charismatic Opalton Grasswren popped up onto a fallen branch wondering who this intruder was. A pair gave us a great performance, singing to each other, scurrying between spinifex bushes like mice, and occasionally sitting up on a log or termite mound giving us the “angry-birds” stare.

Further north we tracked down a slightly thinner and even higher contact call for our second lifer in barely 20 minutes, as a family of Rufous-crowned Emuwrens yielded to our lists. On the walk back to the car through the spinifex we flushed a Little Buttonquail, and found at least 4 more Opalton Grasswrens. Despite the weather we already had our supposed hardest two targets for the day, and drove on to the visitor centre smugly beaming with our success.

Lark Quarry is the site of arguably Australia’s most famous and significant dinosaur find. At the end of the access track there is a visitor centre and large warehouse structure protecting a large set of thousands of ancient footprints, supposedly the result of a stampede of small dinosaurs fleeing a predator. We didn’t go in to look at the footprints, instead skirting around the edge where we found Little Woodswallows, a confiding Spinifexbird (much more cooperative than yesterday’s bird, so that it almost felt like a lifer, and was also Mike’s best ever view) and more Rufous-crowned Emuwrens. Having done well early we now had time on our side and decided to do the long “Jump Up” walk of 3.5 km through the spectacular mesa and escarpment landscape. This was well worth the effort for the unique scenery, especially beautiful at the moment because of the rich green of the spinifex and carpets of wildflowers. It was also the site of my next lifer. As we approached a small grove of lancewood Mike noted he was hearing babblers, and pretty soon we had both locked onto a small group of Hall’s Babbler.

With time on our side we elected to drive the long unsealed loop south, then east, then north to Opalton.  We no longer needed the grasswren named after this isolated opal-mining community, but we were both keen to visit this area, still designated fossicking land. We had neither the time nor the inclination to look for opals – we were after a different gem, even though we’d already scored earlier in the day. Picnic lunch at the bush camp was enlivened by good numbers of Spinifex Pigeons pecking away around the one or two caravans, and afterwards we tramped into the bush south of the camp and found two more Opalton Grasswrens.

I had one more target for the day and we now drove 90km north to Bladensburg National Park. We pulled up at a spot where a friend had recently seen Quailthrush and I thought I heard the high-pitched drawn-out contact call as soon as we exited the car. I played the same on my phone, and yes, it was answered. Pretty soon we were enjoying the sight of three Chestnut-breasted Quail-thrush, beautifully patterned in blacks, browns and whites. It was dark, so my photos were taken with very high ISO and slowish shutter-speeds, possible because of the good noise performance of the R6 and a helping hand from DXO PureRaw post-processing. We had arrived in the nick of time, because as we were enjoying these stunners, heavy raindrops started to fall, and as we raced back to the car the heavens opened. It bucketed rain all of the way back to Winton, visibility poor through the windscreen even though the wipers were on full blast. Depressions on the road turned into streams, channels alongside turned to torrents and the creeks that normally trickled under the road had swollen to bursting point.

Mike, of course, still had one more target. We arrived back in Winton just as the rain started to ease and headed straight for the cooling ponds near the thermal power plant on the eastern edge of the town which had seemed to hold the most promise. We scoured the area and after flushing a couple of Brown Quails (which we initially thought might be something much more exciting) Mike called out to me from the middle of a rough field: “I’ve got them”. The sun came out for just long enough to give us outstanding views of around 20 Plum-headed Finch, though I regretted leaving my camera in the car when one popped up to the top of a large thistle barley 4m away from me in our 5 minute window of golden evening light.

We ended the day, like yesterday, with drinks and dinner at Tassersall’s. The excellent barman even remembered our drinks order from the night before.

15 Oct

Day 4 was a reserve day that I’d planned we could use returning to Mt Isa to look again for Carps if they were still needed. However with all of our potential lifers now safely in the bag in our first 3 full days, today would be a bit more relaxed. I was keen to try for Letter-winged Kites, which had been seen regularly for the last few months south of Boulia. We found out this morning that our friend Chris Young had been birding a similar route, though a couple of days ahead of us. It was a shame to miss him, but he confirmed via FB messenger that he’d had the Kites on his trip up a week ago. Worryingly for us though, he’d also reported that they were not present when passed back through on his way south just 3 days ago. The drive west would not be as relaxed as I thought…

For the first time in the trip we had a relative lie in, and returned just after dawn to the cooling ponds for one more look at the Plum-headed Finches. Although our primary purpose this morning was to make progress towards Boulia, the next couple of hours were unexpectedly good quality, relaxed birding as we drove through outback country enlivened by the rains of the last several months. Dozens of Australian Pratincoles flushed from the road, hundreds of larks, pipits and Budgies used the fence lines as convenient perches and wheeled in flocks as we passed by. Smaller numbers of that other iconic outback parrot, Cockatiel, were feeding on the verges. It was also great to find a few Australian Bustards.

Gradually, the dead flat grazing plains and endless horizons west of Winton, gave way to green spinifex-covered flats and mesas where millions of years of erosion have created distinctive flat-topped hills, reminiscent of something out of the cartoon of our youth, Roadrunner. As we passed between a couple of such hills we pulled over to check out a telecoms tower – it’s always worth checking these for Grey Falcons in this part of the world because they are the favoured nesting site for several pairs throughout inland Australia. Goodness knows where they chose to make their nests in the days before microwave transmissions and mobile phone coverage! Quickly Mike picked up a group of raptors in flight and we could see with our bins that although a couple were Black Kites, two more were smaller, sleeker and much more agile in flight, grey with dark primaries: bingo, Grey Falcon! They landed on the tower but then 10 minutes later were disturbed by the kites again; they took off and wheeled about the mesa before landing on the top of the rocky outcrop. Realising an amazing opportunity, we set off across the plain to the base of the escarpment, and then picked our way through the spinifex and rocks along a ridge to the top. The climb would have been worth it for the outstanding view of the countryside alone, but our reward for the hot strenuous climb was even better: a rare and brilliant opportunity to observe the grey ghosts of the desert at eye-level. Three juvs stared back at us, then as we made to leave, took off and gave great views in flight as they continued to wheel about the mesa before drifting back over to the comms tower.

From here we drove more or less non-stop to Boulia where we checked into the comfortable Desert Sands Motel, refueled, then headed south.

LWK congregate in colonies of up to dozens of birds, nesting and roosting in the few trees that dot the dry creek channels, choosing these to be near high concentrations of Long-haired Rats, their favourite food. Like Grey Falcons, they are true desert specialists, but they are also special as the world’s only truly nocturnal raptor. Mike and I had missed them during our SA Outback Loop last year and I had only ever previously seen two birds, twitched on the Adelaide Plains in 2017 when a pair tried to breed near Hamley Bridge but were forced out by terrible weather; I had never seen them in their “proper” habitat, so although not a lifer for me, finding the Kites was a major secondary target.

It should have a been a very chilled trip south, but I was nervous. For the last few months there had been regular ebird reports of a large roost 90km south of Booulia. But we knew that many of the birds had been identified as fully fledged juvs, so the breeding event was nearly over. They are highly nomadic. And Chris had failed to find them at that super-reliable site just a few days earlier. We just had to hope they had not yet moved on (translation to local lingo: that the fucking fuckers had not fucking fucked off). Mike was driving as we got closer to the spot and we saw a number of large raptors – more Black Kites – but then I saw two smaller ones crossing the road and through the windscreen I got enough to see the black stripe – the “letter” – on the underwing. Letter-winged Kites were still here! We scanned across the lines of trees and saw a couple of birds roosting on the bare branches at the top, but most of the dozen or so birds we saw were wheeling about high in the sky. This was not how I’d been expecting to see them, and they were mostly too distant for photography, but once or twice one would do a close fly-past.

It had been a staggeringly good “raptor day”. Not only had we scored with the two desert specialists, LWK and Grey Falcon we’d had numerous roadside Wedge-tailed Eagles, Brown Falcon, Black Falcon, Black-shouldered Kite, Black Kite, Whistling Kite, Spotted Harrier and Nankeen Kestrel.

My LWK-itch scratched, we bombed north again, just in time for dusk at a waterhole east of Boulia. This was somewhat disappointing. Four Flock Bronzewing visited the dam soon after we arrived, but did not hang about for long, and it was getting dark when we knocked it on the head. The pub in Boulia failed to live up to Tattersall’s back in Winton. The locals were having a rowdy Friday night and we felt distinctly unwelcome as tourists. Afterwards, though, a night drive was quite productive with several Barn Owls and a couple of Tawny Frogmouths, including two Barnies actually on the road!

16 Oct

Today was our final day, with main objective to make it north back to Mt Isa in time for Mike’s flight back home at 1700. We began by returning to the waterhole, but it was still devoid of the throngs we’d hoped for. Instead we went looking for Red-browed Pardalote in the gums of dry creek beds. One was singing as we pulled up next to a small bridge. For a tiny bird its voice is loud and carries a long way; some 200m or more from where we parked we were able to track the bird down for my first decent photos of this sweet species.   

After a spur-of-the-moment celebratory egg-and-bacon roll at the roadhouse, we refueled and trundled north to Dajarra, through more good-looking spinifex country. I wonder how many Night Parrots we drove past? Pullen Pullen Reserve, where John Young found and photographed them in 2013 is not so far away, and surely they must use the great conditions to breed up like every other species out here.

Mike’s brother Steve had tipped us off about another waterhole where we hoped to see and maybe photograph finches coming to drink. We found the spot, where in the lee of a spinifex covered slope there was a small puddle remaining in a dam surrounded by large gums. Grey-crowned Babblers chattered their way through the scrub, a Spinifexbird sang and then posed nicely on a termite mound (though I found no Grasswrens or Emuwrens here despite the habitat looking perfect). Grey-headed Honeyeaters were common and I tried to get a decent photo. A Common Bronzewing loitered near the puddle in one of the large trees and several Budgies flew into low branches then dashed down warily for a quick drink. Best of all small flocks of Zebra and Painted Finches were hear, as predicted by Steve. Thx mate!

Other than a few roadside raptors, the rest of the trip to Mt Isa was largely bird free. At times rain dotted the windscreen, and by the time we pulled into the pub in Isa for lunch it was seriously heavy again. A day drink and a pub meal was good way to wait out the storm. By the time we headed to Lake Moondarra for some final birding it had eased. Once again we enjoyed the diversity on offer at the rich man-made lake, and increased our trip list by adding Red-capped Plover, Sharp-tailed Sandpiper, Marsh Sandpiper, Whiskered Tern, both Intermediate and Little Egret, Royal Spoonbill, White-bellied Sea-eagle, and Torresian Crow. I’d hoped we might come across one more lifer, Oriental Plover, which are regularly seen on the shallow grassy banks here, but it was not to be.

After dropping Mike at the airport I drove back to Pamela St watertanks for some final evening birding. Although I heard a Kalkadoon Grasswren in the spot we’d searched unsuccessfully last week, it would not show itself. I did, however, have a nice encounter with a Red-winged Parrot and small group of Cloncurry Ringneck.

Here’s a full list of all the birds we saw and their locations, a great new feature from ebird: Ebird trip list

17 Oct, Postscript

I’d tossed up whether to do any birding this morning, and even briefly contemplated a trip north to look for Carps one more time. But instead I opted for a well-deserved lie-in and zero birding. I wasn’t completely soft today. During a 3-hour layover in Townsville, instead of slobbing about in the Qantas Club, I walked 2km laden with my heavy rucksack (including all my optics and laptop) and birded Upper Mundy Creek. In searing heat and harsh sunshine I accumulated a tidy list, though I missed the only potential lifer on offer, Brown-backed Honeyeater. The highlight was a great encounter with three Great Bowerbirds near a bower I discovered as I sought refuge from the sun under a huge tree in Harold Philips Park.