Outback tour - Part III

Heading up through sheep and cattle country

There were plagues of grasshoppers throughout the tour

We returned to Brisbane following the Darling River up through Menindee and Bourke and then on to Goondiwindi staying on a couple of farming properties along the way.

Frog in a swimming pool

Birding was good and around Menindee I picked up the Chirruping Wedgebill #397 and on the back roads there were a couple of flocks of Banded Lapwing #398. Outside of Bourke, a temporary wetland had formed after the rains which was packed with waterbirds and we were lucky enough to see a Black Falcon stooping at a flock of sandpipers. One of the properties we stayed on had flocks of hundreds of budgerigars which was spectacular and here I also found a single Masked Woodswallow #399.

An acrobatic Blue-faced Honeyeater

At that point I actually thought I'd got bird number 400 as I'd just read that the (newly named) Paperbark Flycatcher in the Northern Territory has just been split from the Restless Flycatcher giving me an extra tick. But what the splitters giveth, the lumpers taketh away. The Spotted Catbird of north Queensland has been lumped with the Green Catbird from these parts and so I also lost one leaving the list on 399.

The refreshing Dividing Range

We stopped off briefly on the Dividing Range on the way back into Brisbane which provided us with a cool walk in a forest gully which provided a refreshing conclusion to the trip - 5000 km covered.

A friendly Kookaburra

A pair of Tawny Frogmouths