Powerful Owl

So as I write this, I have a Powerful Owl calling from a tree in my front yard. Words can't describe how happy this makes me, for a number of reasons. Reason one: I didn't have Powerful Owl on my year list yet. Reason two: I didn't have Powerful Owl on my area list yet, let alone my yard list. Reason three: Powerful Owls are awesome! This is one of those weird curve balls nature throws at you sometimes. There is no habitat for Powerful Owls in my area. We do, however, have good connectivity via Cubberla Creek all the way to Mt Coot-tha, where there has been a resident breeding pair of Powerful Owls for many years. Regardless, I would never have put this bird on a list of possible species that could turn up in my area. Honestly I would have expected to get Barn Owl before I got Powerful Owl. Nonetheless, I have photos of a Powerful Owl in a tree in my yard, and I can still hear it calling outside. Amazing!

Total birds to date: 294

A slight diversion

So, this was meant to be my big post, about reaching 300. I had it all planned out. I was driving to Townsville with a friend of mine, and on the way I was going to see Grey Goshawk at Coolum, Black-breasted Button-Quail and many others at Inskip Point, and basically have knocked off 6/7ths of the year's list by March. Sadly, the weather had other ideas. Our drive up the coast was so miserable we had to cancel both Inskip Point and Eungella and just head straight for Townsville. Now don't get me wrong, I love birding around Townsville, but Eungella holds a special place in my heart, and Inskip is still within my 250km area so I was a little dirty about it all to say the least. Still, I did get some good birding in at Paluma, north of Townsville.

I went up there for a day with local birder Duan Biggs, who despite being an international guide and quite a skilled birder, is still missing a couple of local birds. Our target for the day, if you can call such difficult birds targets, was Red-necked Crake. There had been one seen within the last week, and Duan felt it was his time to find one, having stood metres from calling birds in the past without seeing them (a frustration I know well from trying to find Rufous Scrub-birds). Despite a valiant effort searching, we failed to find a crake, though we did hear one calling, thus adding to Duan's frustration. On the way we did manage to find most of the local endemic species - Bower's Shrike-Thrush, Tooth-billed Bowerbird, Grey-headed Robin, Chowchilla, Macleay's Honeyeater, Victoria's Riflebird.

Actually, speaking of Riflebirds, we saw something pretty amazing while we were there - a lek of juvenile male Riflebirds practicing their displaying. Apparently young males often congregate in groups to practice their mating dances, with one taking the part of the male, and another pretending to be a female. Then they swap. Our birds were using the cross-bars on powerpoles to display, and in all I counted eight birds flitting around and doing silly dances. It was pretty amazing! Also amazing was having a male Superb Fruit-Dove land in a tree above us and sit in the open feeding for a while. You may remember back to my pathetic but "good enough" views of Superb Fruit-Dove from near Yandina earlier in the year. Well prior to this trip I'd never really had much better views. Once at Julatten I had a male fly overhead but not perch, a couple of times at Eungella I identified birds by call and then saw them 30m up in the canopy, but certainly not what you would call a "life view". Well I can now say I've seen a male Superb Fruit-Dove in the wild as well as I'm likely to ever see one, and I'm pretty happy about that. Another highlight was the abundant and bold Noisy Pittas in the area. These are birds that are easy enough to see around Brisbane, in fact I saw mine for the year at Lacey's Creek back in January. However, easy to see and easy to see well are not the same thing at all. At Paluma at one stage I had a Noisy Pitta bouncing along a driveway only 10m away from me, completely in the open. It hung around for about 30 minutes while we watched the lek of Riflebirds and got bored of seeing the pitta so well. Actually, I lie, I would never get bored of seeing a pitta that well, but it wasn't the Red-necked Crake, so we eventually moved further on.

A point of interest for me was that Duan was surprised by the presence of Satin Bowerbirds in great numbers. I was a little surprised to see one - I don't believe I had seen one in my previous visits to the area, and I was aware they were pretty rare in Eungella so figured it would be the same here. Well, in the course of the day we probably saw more than 30 Satin Bowerbirds, all females and young males, no males in adult plumage at all. We even found two bowers with blue objects and attendant males doing mimicry and dancing. Duan said he had once before seen Satin Bowerbirds in the area, but they were quite rare, so I'm not sure what is going on there but it could be of some interest.

A few days after Paluma, Duan gave me a ring and said he wanted to do some wader watching, which I was all for, seeing as how waders are kind of my specialty. The target for the day was Wandering Tattler, but we started by looking for flocks of roosting waders near the mouth of the Ross River. Turns out the day we went was a pretty major tide, and while we did find a flock of about a thousand birds, they were on a sandbank so far away as to be unidentifiable. On the bright side, while we were there a radio station promotional car stopped and gave us a doughnut and an iced coffee for free, which was pretty awesome. Our next tactic was to head to the breakwater for the river mouth, and walk along the groyne. This proved to be highly successful. We started out with great views of a pair of grey-morph Eastern Reef-Egrets, and some young Striated Herons. As we walked further down the groyne we started seeing Green Turtles, mostly youngish ones, maybe half the size of adults or smaller. Finally, as we neared the end of the breakwater we got lucky and flushed three Wandering Tattlers which gave their diagnostic calls immediately, saving us the effort of trying to puzzle out their other, more difficult ID features. We had prolonged views of the birds resting within less than five metres away from us, easily the best views I've ever had of this species, though we had to be pretty careful to get views that good. Our day was topped off by a close fly-past of a Brahminy Kite, and a group of three Sooty Oystercatchers, plus more Turtles on the way back. In all a very satisfying end to a wonderful if brief trip.

Total birds to date: STILL 293

Image 1: Immature male Victoria's Riflebirds practicing displaying, the H-Trail, Paluma
Image 2: Male Superb Fruit-Dove, the H-Trail, Paluma
Image 3: Noisy Pitta, the H-Trail, Paluma
Image 4: Wandering Tattlers, Ross River breakwater, Townsville

Swamp Harrier, Common Sandpiper

Today, on the spur of the moment, I decided to have a crack at a couple of local birds not on my list yet. Last week, on the Broadwater trip, Andy Jensen had told me that he had a Swamp Harrier and a Common Sandpiper being seen regularly at his local patch, Kedron Brook. This, interestingly, is the same place I had the Grass Owl at the beginning of the year, but I have never been there during daylight before.

I gave Andy a call about 4pm and asked if he was interested in having a look around. He was already out in the field, having a look around on the off-chance of a Black Bittern turning up, so was quite happy to meet me at the wetland and show me where he had the birds. When I got there Andy was there, and chatting with local birder and guide Roy Sonnenberg plus his guest. They were there having a look for Lewin's Rail (apparently seen twice at the site this year so far) and of course for the famous owl. We had a quick chat and then set off across the sodden field.

Now at this point I should mention that I haven't owned gumboots (wellingtons/galoshas, etc) since I was about ten, but being out with Rob last week in the mud at the wader roost really pointed out the usefulness of this bit of birding kit. Rob said I could pick up a cheap pair from Big-W, though I ended up getting a $20 pair from Kmart. Well today they paid for themselves, as wading across that former grassland (current lake) would have ruined my expensive boots or any other shoes I chose to wear on the day. So armed with gumboots, camera and binoculars we set out. We didn't have to wait long, with a young male Swamp Harrier gliding across the back of the field, and then shortly after an adult female flushing from nearby the track we were walking down. We reached the back of the field and walked along the muddy channel at the far side. The very high tide was a little disheartening, but about 15 minutes into the search, Andy called out that he had a Common Sandpiper on the far bank. And another. Then I picked up another two. In all we had four Common Sandpipers on this small stretch of creek bank, all together. This was pretty extraordinary as they are a species I wasn't positive I would see this year, didn't even have a potential site to look, and had never seen in south-east QLD before. I'm aware they aren't as rare as I am making them out to be, and I know people who have sites they swear by that I have always failed to find birds at. All I know is it's now on my list and I'm very happy about it. And lets not forget, Common Sandpipers are one of the most charismatic of our waders, with their bobbing tails and short, erratic running. It was good to see them again, regardless of their place on my year list.

Total birds to date: 293

Stradbroke Seawatching

So not having learned my lesson from the failed seawatch attempt at Pt Cartwright a few weeks back, I responded to an invitation from local birder Colin Reid to head over to North Stradbroke Island for the day to look for seabirds from Pt Lookout. If you wanted to take a car over to the island, it would make for a very expensive day, however there is a fast catamaran across that is quite cheap as a return ticket, and is met by a bus that takes you all the way to the lookout at the northern tip of the island. Using this method of transport, we had a very pleasant journey out and back, and from that side of things the day was highly successful.

As I drove to the ferry in the morning, rain was pouring down nearly the whole way to the terminal. By the time I reached Cleveland, I was ready to turn around and go home, but as I pulled up the rain had cleared and the horizon was looking promising. I figured I should give it a go, as Colin, Rob Dougherty and Stuart Warren were all heading over. At least I'd have good company if it was miserable. By the time we stepped off the bus at the point, it wasn't raining at all, and in fact, apart from a brief shower, we didn't have any rain for the four hours we spent looking. Of course, as soon as we left the weather moved in and it started raining again. It was almost like someone was watching out for us!

In terms of what we saw on the day, it was a huge success. I didn't really know what to expect in a morning, but we managed to find three year birds for me. The first was a pale morph Arctic Jaeger the cruised by at speed, and later in the day came in a little closer for some better views, along with a brief visit from an intermediate Pomarine Jaeger. We had a near-constant stream of Wedge-tailed Shearwaters going by all day, and at one point a Fluttering/Hutton's type Shearwater too, though the hoped-for Streaked Shearwaters didn't appear. At one point we had a Bridled/Sooty Tern cruise past about 500m offshore, but we couldn't see it well enough to confirm an ID. The stars of the day though were the noddies. All through the hours we spent there we had a small but constant trickle of both Black and Common Noddies, both new for me for the year. It was great to get good looks at both as they cruised past flying against the wind, because it gave me a chance to really get to know the ID features. My previous experience with the two species was from snorkelling trips, where I got so close to the birds I never had to try hard to make an ID. From a distance, in windy conditions, it is a lot harder! Our final great birds of the day were a flock of seven Wandering Tattlers, including one in partial breeding plumage. They were calling near-constantly for a few hours, kicking up a fuss and flying between rocky pillars. A great, sustained view of a good bird.

On top of all the great birds we had hundreds of Bottlenose Dolphins cruising back and forth around the point, surfing waves and breaching, and quite a few Green Turtles and a few HUGE Loggerhead Turtles surfacing right off the rocks. Colin even had an eagle ray breaching at one point. The day was so successful we are going to have to go back in winter for another go. Another bonus of going back at that time of year is the Humback Whales will be back by then, playing around offshore and breaching. Something to look forward to!

Total birds to date: 291

Photo 1: Black Noddy
Photo 2: Common Noddy
Photo 3: Arctic Jaeger, courtesy of and (C) Rob Dougherty
Photo 4: Bottlenose Dolphins