Birds of the road-trip

Peaceful Dove

There wasn't enough time for extensive birding on the trip and so only a meagre three new ones were added to the list.

Square-tailed kite in the bag...

We had one night and an early morning in Lamington NP just over the border into Queensland. This should be an awesome birding spot but with the Queensland school holidays in full swing, the place was packed and I think most birds had run away. I was onto a Lyrebird of some sort at one stage and plunged off the track into the jungle only to give up after being attacked by a group of vicious plants. I returned to the path bleeding and then the next day all the little puncture wounds turned into big red boils. Crazy. And it may not even have been an Albert's Lyrebird anyway. The consolation prize consisted of several friendly Logrunners #382 which seemed happy enough next to the path.

... and the Freckled Duck

Between Lamington and Noosa we stopped at two sites reported online and much to Howard's relief we spotted the birds at both places in only a few minutes. A pair of nesting Square-tailed Kites #383 in a southern Brisbane suburb and a Freckled Duck #384 in a pond in the middle of the town of Gatton (only a slight detour!).

Anyone see a honeyeater?

Later on the trip we spent a couple of hours in the Eungella NP as I tried in vain to hunt down the Eungella Honeyeater. Only discovered a few years back, it lives there and nowhere else. Eungella is aboriginal for "misty mountain" and this was fairly descriptive I'd say as a huge inpenetrable cloud sat over the hills cutting visibility to about 10-20 m in places. No wonder they only found the honeyeater a few years back.

Pelican