Back in Feb I wrote a blog post entitled “Double Bogey”, describing how I finally connected with two Australian birds that I’ve tried and failed to see on multiple occasions. As it’s turned out, 2023 has been the Year of the Bogey Bird, and I have laid a few more bogeys to rest since I last blogged, even though for the most part, birding opportunities have been few and far between.
Mangrove Golden Whistler is a bird of the far north of Australia. I’ve tried multiple times to see it in a few allegedly reliable spots; “reliable” apparently refers to every other bugger, not me. There is an ebird pin next to a bridge on the Arnhem Hwy over the Adelaide River where many people have reported it, and I have tried multiple times. South of the highway is a coffee shop and jetty for one-or-other of the jumping crocodile tours, while on the north side a rough track leads down to an un-salubrious area, a small, unloved picnic spot with some rubbish, scraggy scrub and a creepy feeling as if a croc might be lurking just under the scrub on the bank of the Adelaide River. Twice I’d been to the spot and tried unsuccessfully. The first was in 2020 (blog here), and I also missed it at a couple of spots in the mangroves near Darwin. In 2022 when I returned with Erica and Louisa for a Dad+Daughters trip to see wildlife and waterfalls, I stopped at the spot again, but again missed it, birding under pressure as the girls waited impatiently in the car. That trip I also tried the Orchard Rd Mangroves again, memorably almost getting myself trapped in crocodile infested waters — as I tried in vain to find a MGW, the tide behind me rushed in almost cutting off my path back to the road. I returned to the car very wet and muddy, but still with no MGW tick.
So to the point: in April 2023, Nikki and I took a fabulous trip to NT on The Ghan, the historic railway that travels from Adelaide all the way to Darwin, some 3000km and 3 days’ travel north. It was not, you understand, a birding trip, and at some stage I will blog properly about our train travel which was simply wonderful (the post has been forming in my head for months, but I have not had the inspiration or time to squeeze it out). Off the train, we travelled from Darwin to Kakadu and back, Nikki’s first trip to this famous, iconic part of the tropical north. Despite this not being a birding trip, on our way east on Arnhem Hwy I pulled off the road just short of the bridge for my third attempt in this one spot. Nikki was clearly not amused at this “unplanned” stop at a rather “un-scenic” locale, and at being left in the car as I wandered around in the heat amongst the mozzies for 15 minutes. I tried and failed once again to hear or see my quarry.
On the return journey I once again overruled her protests, and after a cup of coffee at the crocodile cruise station café, I dashed over alone to the scraggy bamboo and scrub where finally a bird answered my playback. Fleetingly – but that’s all I needed — a female MGW appeared mid-storey in the bushes. By this stage it had become all about the tick rather than appreciating her subtle beauty compared with the gaudy, rich bright yellow and black of the male. I squeezed off a couple of photos to record the moment, and bounded back to the car, where my long-suffering wife was non-plussed with my record shots, but probably relieved that my mood was lifted. See if you can spot the female MGW (yes, she is there) – my binocular view was better than this, but not much. Another bogey slain!
A day earlier on the same trip we had cruised the Yellow Waters Billabong where I found for myself a fly-over Great-billed Heron for an Australian tick. I had hoped for and looked for this bird on the Yellow Waters cruise twice before and also on the Daintree (blog here). I’d seen one in West Papua, 2018, so not a lifer, but GBH was starting to assume Australian bogey status by now.
Between my Feb/Mar and April trips, a few stubborn bogeys had fallen – Ground Parrot, Tassie Boobook, MGW and GBH – but there was one that still stood out, Black-breasted Buttonquail, BBBQ or “the barbecue bird”. BBBQ is restricted to a smallish part of SE Qld with its stronghold in the Sunshine Coast hinterland. Many Australian (and visiting) birders saw BBBQ when they were easy as chooks at the campground at Inskip Point. Apparently you just used to turn up in the campground and early morning they would walk through the camp or be obvious on the nearby trails. Although there are still birds present, they are no longer as common or habituated. I’d had a number of unsuccessful tries, and the narrowness of the dips coupled with the time and expense of each attempt added to the frustration of not having them on my list. Let me explain.
My first try was with Tom Tarrant and his friend Charlie Scott, at Yarraman State Forest, about 3.5 hours NE of Brisbane. On arrival at the lovely picnic area in hoop-pine forest, there was immediately lots of evidence of the birds being present. The edges of the picnic area were dotted with platelets, the small circles of bare earth where a BBBQ has twirled around foraging for food. Charlie wandered off ahead and within minutes had found a bird. I followed the directions and could see leaf-litter being tossed into the air. Surely I just had to wait still and quiet and it would move slightly from behind the log into view. Easy. Not so fast, Reid! Instead, it went the opposite way, slipping off into dense lantana never to be seen again. In fact we sent the next 6 hours trying various spots in Yarraman unsuccessfully. Two years later I teamed up with Tom again, this time trying a spot he’s found them previously not far from Inskip. I found a bird running away from us, but the view was distant and untickable. It went on Tom’s ebird list but I was still not satisfied and could not add the bird to my lists.
This year in August I tried again. After working Friday at QUT, on Saturday morning I followed a relatively recent ebird report from Charlie Moreland campround in Conondale National Park, 2 hours north of Brisbane. This was a lovely spot in preserved hoop pine forest. I saw plenty of platelets, and some other very nice birds, but left after 4 hours’ search empty-handed. Here are some pics from the forest: Logrunner, Large-billed Scrubwren, Pale-yellow Robin, Brown Cuckoo-dove, Little Shrike-thrush, Paradise Riflebird (f).
As I drove back to Brisbane I carried on birding and detoured past Samsonvale, finding some Cotton Pygmy Geese on the lake, for my Australian tick. Then Tom, who lives nearby, wandered down to meet me and we hung about in the grassy area at the end of Postman’s Track until dusk, hearing King Quail, then picking up a fabulous Australian Grass Owl in the torch-light. Over the years I had tried for AGO a few times near Brisbane Airport where they used to be regular (but not for me), so it was almost a bogey bird itself.
I got the tick, but as you can see, my choice of shutter-speed left something to be desired! And AGO was not the only tick I got on Postman’s Track. I woke later that night to terrible itching on my leg, and when I got back to Adelaide later that day and did a proper inspection, Nikki helped me find 4 ticks, mostly in inaccessible areas, little blood-sucking bastards whose wounds itched for days after.
I digress. Fast forward to November and another trip to QUT. This time, after the day’s work I headed to Postman’s Track again, once again meeting Tom and we successfully tracked down a pair of King Quail which called from next to the track despite the slightly blowy conditions. They refused to come out into the open, but flushed as we approached for excellent flight views of a male and female. We walked back to the car as the sun was setting, then in the dark, I drove north to Maleny where I had a hotel booked to be close to Charlie Moreland Campground for another try for BBBQ.
The next morning was rather surreal. From 5.30 until 8 I wandered the loop trail hearing lots of birds, but seeing very little, and neither hearing nor seeing BBBQ. At the end of the trail, near the horse paddock I found fairly fresh evidence of BBBQ activity, but the birds were nowhere to be seen. Some scratching in the leaf-litter had the pulse racing momentarily, but when I landed bins on the culprit it was a Logrunner – cracking bird, but not the hoped-for lifer. I bumped into a young couple also seeking BBBQ, but like me, they were empty-handed.
At 8 I had to interrupt the birding, drive back to Maleny and hook up to the hotel wifi. For 45 minutes I was in a video-conference appearing before a Parliamentary Select Committee about AI in Education. I’ve had some pretty weird tech-meets-birding-trip moments over the years, but this one probably wins the prize for strangest and most incongruent. Fortunately, the wifi was strong and reliable enough that the Q&A was uninterrupted. And quite possibly the pollies did not even realise I had dialed in from an outback Qld pub! By 9.45 I was on my way back to the Campground.
On arrival back at Charlie Moreland I decided to concentrate my search along the stretch near the horse paddock because this was where I’d seen lots of platelets. Persistence and patience were the order of the day; for another 2.5 hours I walked slowly back and forth along the same stretch of 300m or so, listening intently and scanning the leaf-litter for any sign of movement. At 1pm, by a large fallen log, I caught a smidgeon of movement. I raised my bins expecting to see another Whipbird or Lewin’s Honeyeater or Logrunner, but – oh joy! — a distant but unmistakable image of a male Button-quail materialised on my retina. You fucking beauty, finally! Before I could fully appreciate the view or go for my camera, it sloped off behind the log. Surely I could approach? I edged forward, peered beyond the log, and was delighted to find another male and a lone female. Obtaining any unobstructed view was almost impossible in the dense vegetation, but with my pulse racing I was able to get just a couple of keeper shots of the female as she froze at one point in a slightly more open spot. For the next 30 minutes I followed the group around hoping for some more open views and better images. But the birds clearly knew I was present, and kept a reasonable distance, moving away if I tried to approach, however stealthily.
They were otherwise undisturbed by my presence, feeding as per normal, making platelets by tossing up the leaf-litter while spinning on the spot, pecking at the ground then moving to a new spot, a little further away from me every time. My tummy was rumbling now, and I decided I’d done as well as I would today. I pointed the rental car to Kenilworth for lunch, then the motorway for the flog back to Brisbane. Another bogey laid to rest!
