Pelagics: Gould's Petrel, Black-winged Petrel, White-necked Petrel

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times... our first pelagic for the year. I have a love-hate relationship with pelagic birding - I love it, it hates me. Well, actually, to be more specific, its mostly just the Southport pelagic that hates me. You see, I get seasick. Sometimes. Actually, mostly just off Brisbane. In the boat that we use for the Southport pelagics. Its true, I don't seem to get sick anywhere else, or in any other boats. So signing up for the February pelagic this year, I knew there was a chance it would end badly for me. The week leading up to the pelagic was ideal. There were two storm cells approaching the region, one from the north over the ocean, the other from the south, also over the ocean. The prevailing wind was from the south-east, originating in the seas north of New Zealand. All this combined to mean that seabirds would be concentrating in the ocean off Brisbane, culminating on Friday night, the day before the pelagic, when conditions would begin to ease, allowing us to get the boat out. And that's how it panned out. Winds were 10-15 knot south-easterlies, swell was 2.5 - 3m. It was pretty rough, for Southport, and with the nasty cross-currents that the area is known for the boat was tossed around a bit like a cork in a washing machine. Or at least that's how it felt to my stomach. Needless to say, two seasickness tablets had little effect, and I was sick as a dog all day. That about covers the "worst of times", however, despite this challenge, the perfect lead up produced a near perfect day bird-wise. We had everything we could have hoped for and more, with 3 lifers for me, and 13 year birds all up, all of them difficult to get any way other than on a boat.

We started the cruise out well, with the occasional Pomarine Jaeger mixed in amongst the Wedge-tailed and Flesh-footed Shearwaters. We had one Hutton's Shearwater do a flypast on the way out. When we reached the continental shelf things started to get really exciting. Our first petrel of the day was a Black-winged Petrel, a good rarity for Australia and my first lifer for the day. This was joined by a second, and then by a Gould's Petrel, another cookilaria-type petrel, and my second lifer for the day. The action didn't stop, with Tahiti Petrels joining in the flurry, and then a flypast from a Kermadec Petrel which fortunately approached on the side I was throwing up over, because otherwise I probably would have missed it.

After about half an hour of watching the cookilaria petrels circle the boat, we decided to head over to a flurry of activity we could see about a kilometre away. This turned out to be a flock of a few hundred shearwaters, but sadly, the petrels didn't follow us over. We did start to pick up oceanic terns, with Sooty Tern being almost common through the day, and later on a single Bridled Tern making a pass by the boat. A Great-winged Petrel did a couple of fly-bys of the boat before disappearing - another good local rarity. Through this section of the day I missed several White-necked Petrels that passed us well back from the boat. We finally ran out of time and started heading back, and I was feeling pretty good about two lifers and a whole bunch of year birds. But the excitement still wasn't over.

On the cruise back we finally had a White-necked Petrel cruise close by the boat, affording another photographic opportunity, and my third lifer of the day. Further on, we had Lesser Frigatebirds circling over the water near a pod of offshore Bottlenose Dolphins and some Common Dolphins, all of which came and rode our bow wave for a while. The Bottlenoses, nearly twice the size of the Commons, chased the little guys away pretty quickly, but they did put on enough of a show for me to confirm Common Dolphin as a cetacean lifer for me. Not done yet, the day had one more surprise in store, with a White-tailed Tropicbird coming off the ocean near us and making a near-complete sweep of tropical pelagic species that can be seen off Brisbane.

Andrew managed to get one back on me, as I had seen Wedge-tailed Shearwaters in my disastrous sea-watch a few weeks ago. This brought our totals back to within four of each other. It does mean I'm pulling out of the March pelagic - the massive success of the bird list we came away with, coupled with the debilitating sea-sickness mean I don't want to step on a boat until winter, preferably late winter. We'll see how we go.

Total birds to date: 273

Photo 1: Black-winged Petrel
Photo 2: Gould's Petrel
Photo 3: White-necked Petrel
Photo 4: Common Dolphin

http://southportpelagics.wildiaries.com/trips/286

January 31st part 2: Stubble Quail (Coolmunda Dam & Durakai)

The decision to head to Coolmunda Dam turned out to be a fantastic one. On the road there we stopped a few times and picked up some new year birds: Apostlebird, Jacky Winter, and for me a White-winged Triller that Andrew missed. The reason Andrew missed this bird was 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 was 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