Lake Broadwater redux

So the last few months have been a bit crazy, and not a lot of birding has been done (well not by me anyway). In the interval between my last post and this one, I've launched a website (www.bird-o.com) in conjunction with Simon Mustoe, done a week's consulting work at Alpha, started working part time at Mountain Design, and continued with a bunch of other non-bird related activities. However, I did find the time to sneak out once at the end of April to check out Lake Broadwater again with my partner in crime, Andrew Stafford. You may recall the lake was bone dry on our first visit, but wow, what a change!

This time when we reached the lake, it was absolutely full to the brim. Walking around the edges we flushed many hundreds of frogs, mostly Ornate Burrowing Frogs, but also quite a few Cycloranas (probably novaehollandiae) and some Desert Tree Frogs. On the lake we had hundreds of waterbirds, and a pair of Australian Hobbies foraging for dragonflies over the water. We had come out to look for a pair of Freckled Ducks reported from the area recently, and while we had high hopes on arrival, we failed to find them. We did find every other species of duck you could hope to see in the area though, including about six Blue-billed Ducks, a Musk Duck, and even a Chestnut Teal looking a bit lost.

Moving on from the water we had a quick jaunt through the woodland walk to the south of the lake. Sadly, despite a lot of activity we had no woodland birds that were new for the year. We did flush a pair of Boobook Owls, a bird it was only a matter of time before we saw. In about twenty minutes we saw nearly everything we saw in the previous visit, better and more easily so there was some consolation there. For me it was especially nice to get good views of the Chestnut-rumped Thornbills as they were exceedingly difficult for me to get onto last visit.

From Lake Broadwater we decided to get a bit crazy and drive down to Inglewood to find Squatter Pigeons for Andrew. I had them a few weeks earlier over Easter, but I didn't mind going back to look for them again, hoping to luck onto something good in the meantime. It turned out to be a good hunch, as on the way through Cecil Plains we flushed a couple of small doves off the road. I had initially called them as Peaceful Doves, but Andrew wasn't convinced to we returned to check. This was extremely fortunate as there were three Diamond Doves in the tree beside the road! Diamond Doves are not unheard of in SEQ, but they are quite rare and were not on my list of birds I thought I would get. Needless to say we were both quite excited by the find.

By the time we reached Inglewood it was getting fairly late. We ducked into town to have a quick go for Spotted Bowerbirds, but again they were conspicuously absent. I think I've given up on this site after three visits and will make a special trip to the western edge of Sundown National Park for them now. Heading back to Mosquito Creek Rd we cruised slowly looking for dark pigeons. Andrew was a little skeptical of our chances, as it was nearly sunset now, but this was bang on the time I found my first one, so I was hopeful. In the end I was right, and we had crippling views of a pair of Squatter Pigeons on the road and wandering past the car in the last light of day. We even got to observe the behavior they must have been named for as the birds "squatted" down into the grass. They looked for all the world like pigeon-shaped rocks when they did that, it was a fascinating thing to watch.

With one of our two targets for the day seen, and a nice consolation for missing the Freckled Ducks, we headed back to Brisbane in the dark.

Total birds to date: 308

Photo 1: A poor record shot of a Diamond Dove, near Cecil Plains
Photo 2: A Squatter Pigeon on the road, Mosquito Creek Rd
Photo 3: Squatter Pigeons with one "squatting", Mosquito Creek Rd