Snakes!

This one's for my lovely Auntie Linda who was disappointed to see a lack of spider pictures on the blog. Sorry Linda but I'll keep an eye out for some particularly nasty examples of our eight-legged friends and include them soon. Meanwhile, here's a couple of pythons that we stumbled across up in Queensland. They're harmless. At least I think they are!

Hunting cassowaries

Dave surveys our cassowary hotspot

Probably our main target up north was the cassowary. They're pretty rare at the best of times but a cyclone hit the coast of north Queensland last year which destroyed many of the fruiting trees which the cassowary likes and many were killed by cars or dogs as they came out of the forest looking for food. We knew the most likely area of forest for them though and after a reconnaissance mission the night before, where we found fresh droppings and footprints, we picked our spot on a forest track and early next morning sat quietly and staked the place out. After about 90 minutes of sitting in silence being pestered by flesh-chewing flies, a single bird emerged briefly onto the forest track and disappeared again. That was enough though and Mr Cassowary is now on the list.

The evidence says that cassowaries are around

If only all birds were as easy to track down as the Australian bustard which likes a particular field up on the Tablelands and you just turn up and find a dozen of them. Or on Michaelmas Cay where thousands of terns and boobies breed and just sit there waiting for you to tick them off!

Australian bustard

Michaelmas Cay and a pair of common noddies

North Queensland (19-25th November '06)

After the wedding we headed north to Cairns in tropical north Queensland for a week. The birdwatching was fabulous but once again the hotel curse struck and I was brutally savaged by a posse of angry bedbugs on the first night. We were moved ok though and the hotel shouted us dinner at a nice restaurant so it was almost worth the few days of itching. Well no, not really!

Cairns esplanade - top spot for waders when the tide is right

Coastal mangrove forest

We spent most of our time up on the Atherton Tablelands above Cairns which was nice as the temperature and humidity is noticably more pleasant up there. Once you pass through the rainforest, it opens up into farmland with the occasional wetlands and open woodland.

Atherton Tablelands

Mareeba wetlands

Cairns botanic gardens

We also managed to get out to the Barrier Reef for a day for a spot of snorkelling (as well as the nesting terns!).

Michaelmas Cay - Great Barrier Reef

Geoff and Sarah's wedding

The reason for Dave's visit was the wedding of Geoff and Sarah who went to university at Oxford with us and who now live here in Sydney. The best man, Tom, also played for the mighty St John's MCR football team. It was a lovely ceremony outside at Balmoral beach in Sydney harbour.

The bride and groom arrive for the ceremony

Signing the register

Still time for birdwatching!

Nice to see Dave again after way too long! In fact, just after I was best man at his wedding back in 2002.

Sydney birds

Dave's telescope proved very useful for identification purposes but its also not too bad as a telephoto lens! Just stick your camera into the eye-piece.......

Sharp-tailed sandpiper

Pacific golden plover

Royal spoonbill

Pallid cuckoo

This little brown quail endeared itself to us by running around and around us instead of demonstrating the usual quail sharp exit.

Brown quail

Buff-banded rails are meant to be a bit more unusual so after seeing this one I confidently declared it would be our last. It was the first of about two dozen!

Buff-banded rail

Cheeky! Long-billed corella

Extreme birdwatching

Well Dave has just left to head back to Boston after two weeks of extreme birdwatching and I'll be needing another holiday to recover! With my Australia list standing on an admittedly modest 257 species after four years down here, we managed to rack up 262 species in just two weeks. This included 79 new ones for my list taking it onto a more respectable 336 (if my maths is correct).

Farmland - Hawkesbury river

Forest - Royal NP

Coastline - Norah Head

Wetlands - Pitt Town Lagoon

Now the secret to these figures is primarily planning but also not wasting precious daylight hours with useless things like sleeping, eating and travelling! You must clearly also visit many different habitats and know when to move on when the majority of birds have been seen. I know about the top spots around Sydney but Dave had researched things very nicely for the Queensland leg of the holiday and this led to us seeing over 85% of all the species possible up there. All in all a great success and a lot of fun even if we were up before 6am every day!

Finally time to go home

Hawkesbury swamps (5th November '06)

Rainbow bee-eater

The plan was to return to the Scheyville NP again this weekend but unfortunately a weekend of rain prevented a nice stroll in the woods. Instead, Malcolm and I just took a drive around the Hawkesbury river flood plain to see what was about. We stayed in the car pretty much the whole time but still managed to rack up 50 species including one new one for the list. It should have been three more but a large raptor flying over was gone too quickly - possibly a little eagle - and a small crake fluttered between two reedbeds, with its legs dangling, before disappearing fom sight. I'm pretty sure it was the Baillon's crake but "pretty sure" isn't good enough for list status! The one definite addition was the Australian hobby #256 which perched obligingly on a fence post for a while. Other observations of note included the white-browed woodswallows which were still around in abundance, several pallid cuckoos and 5 rainbow bee-eaters which I managed to photograph from the car.

Feeding on the ground

Dave arrives from Boston on Sunday so the serious business starts then! I've also found the NSW rare bird alert on the web so I can see things getting more obsessed. Dangerous times!