as he was watching a very young Horsfield's Bronze-Cuckoo that was being fed by Fairy-Wrens (poor things!)Further down the road still, we came across what looked like Singing Bushlarks. We actually never got to confirm this, because as Andrew stepped out of the car he flushed a covey of Stubble Quail. Fortunately for me, they flew straight towards me and I was able to track them through the air for a good 20-30 seconds. This was fortunate as I had never seen Stubble Quail before, and it gave me ample time to see all the features on the bird I needed (it was a female, if it had been a male it would have been instantly apparent what I was looking at). We tried for a while to find them again but had no luck. Nonetheless, I had great views of the bird, and after quickly referring to my field guide was happy that Stubble Quail was not only a new bird for the year, but bird #650 for Australia for me. Andrew also found a Swamp Wallaby that looked like it might have been hit by a car, but it was feeding and mobile and we would never have got anywhere near it to try and catch it. Hopefully it lives, but I suspect it will become another sad victim of Australia's wildlife road toll.
Coolmunda Dam was every bit as amazing as I remembered. Last time I was there we had Freckled Duck on the lake. Even though these were sadly missing on the day, there were amazing numbers and diversity of waterbirds present. Before we even reached the lake though, we came across some great birds in the grassland on the road in. Singing Bushlarks were calling from the fenceline, and as we stopped to watch these, we had White-winged Fairy-Wrens pop up and put on a show. Neither Andrew nor I had seen this species of fairy-wren in SEQ before, so it was a real treat to watch a breeding plumaged male strut his stuff on the fence near us. While we watched these great birds, we had Plum-headed Finches moving through the grass as well, and Grey-crowned Babblers on the fenceline. A flock of Cockatiel flying over completed the picture, another reminder that we were in a completely different habitat to anything near Brisbane. On the lake the only new species we found was Australasian Shoveler, but there were many Musk Ducks (more than 10 anyway) and a single Black-tailed Godwit w
as probably the most unusual find. Without the time to investigate the lake closer, we headed off, but on another visit we will have to walk the edges to see if we can find some more shorebirds.Our final stops for the day were Cement Mills Rd and Durakai State Forest. The area around Cement Mills Rd is basically the only place in SEQ where we have any chance of seeing Squatter Pigeon, so we figured we would have a stab at finding one in the last light of the day. Sadly the wind and rain finally got the better of our birding and we didn't manage to find any. We did get a nice consolation prize of Rufous Songlark, and yet again more Plum-headed Finches, this time feeding on the roadside and even at one point on the road itself. On our way into Durakai we had our final two new species for the day with Australian Raven (which we had probably seen driving at speed before now, but we finally managed to stop and confirm the identification), and Common Bronzewing. Durakai was dead quiet apart from a pair of Leaden Flycatcher parents feeding a young bird. As the light began to fail we decided to call it quits for the day and tallied up all the amazing things we had seen in the space of only a few hours.
Total birds to date: 248
Photo 1: Singing (Horsfield's) Bushlark at Coolmunda Dam
Photo 2: Grey-crowned Babbler at Coolmunda Dam
Photo 3: Plum-headed Finch at Cement Mills Rd
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