Lamington National Park birding trip
A male regent bowerbird sitting on our picnic table and a dispute between a rosella and a bird of paradise were two of the memorable events at our first birding trip for 2012 to the O’Reilly’s section of Lamington National Park.
Red-browed finches, crimson rosellas and king parrots awaited us when we first alighted from the tour vehicle, the finches seeking scraps from the parrot-feeding area.
Our walk through the forest to the treetopsproduced the usual three species of scrubwren (white-browed, yellow-throated and large-billed), brush turkey, eastern yellow robin and logrunner. We could hear noisy pittas, black-faced monarchs and eastern whipbirds but failed to spot them. We did also see lewin’s honeyeaters, brown thornbills, pied currawongs and satin bowerbirds.
In the botanic gardens section was either a female or an immature male paradise riflebird (the world’s only subtropical bird of paradise) having some kind of dispute with a crimson rosella in one of the trees.
The riflebird seemed to have the most formiddable ‘weapon’ but suddenly flew off to another group of trees.
Our picnic was keenly watched by several birds, and we were joined by the beautiful fellow in the picture above, but he finally got the message that we weren’t feeding him.
A stroll down Wishing tree track to the little swinging bridge above the pretty gully of treeferns revealed either a Bassian thrush or a russet-tailed thrush (we saw him to briefly to be sure), a red-legged pademelon (they don’t come out of the forest as often as the red-necked) and finally a glimpse of the monarch.
Our birdlist for O’Reilly’s that day included paradise riflebird, regent bowerbird, satin bowerbird, green catbird, eastern whipbird (heard), logrunner, yellow-throated scrubwren, white-browed scrubwren, largebilled scrubwren, brown thornbill, black-faced monarch, noisy pitta (heard), Lewin’s honeyeater, eastern spinebill, thrush (russet-tailed or Bassian), rufous fantail, red-browed finch, pied currawong, Australian magpie (in the open grassy area), Torresian crow (ditto), crimson rosella, king parrot, wonga pigeon, white-headed pigeon (heard), fan-tailed cuckoo (heard) and (of course) brush turkey.
We called at Eagleby Wetlands on our return trip to Brisbane, where we saw a pair of swans with young cygnets (they may look like ducklings but we agreed they were not ‘ugly’)
Other birds we saw that day at Eagleby included azure kingfisher sitting prominently on an exposed tea-tree branch above the water, greater egret, cattle egret, wood duck, hardhead duck, black duck, grey teal, purple swamphen, dusky moorhen, Eurasian coot, masked lapwing, little black cormorant, darter, rainbow lorikeet, crested pigeon, welcome swallow, noisy miner, magpielark and red-backed fairy-wren.