Some weekend pics

A cheeky Crimson Rosella

We are lucky to be surrounded by beautiful birds in our 'neighborhood.'  An overnight jaunt to Lamington was so much fun, all the birds are active in the pursuits of springtime--eating, songs, chasing tail (really!) and raising families.  The Crimson Rosellas are used to being fed from trays of seed that the tourists buy at the visitor's center.  Even if you don't have food, the rosellas will check just to make sure.

Eastern Whipbird

Whipbirds are usually experts at foraging about the forest floor inobtrusively (Dirk says: they skulk and flit - rarely do I get a clear view!) although it's always fun to hear their contact calls--the male with his whipcrack and the female's answering  'tchew-twchew.'  This pair had a hungry youngster to feed, though.  We were paying no attention to hearing whipbirds close by, and checking out a Noisy Pitta nest when these two appeared in front of our noses--where we were just happened to be in a prime spot for gathering something good to eat.

Eastern Whipbird

They were hopping about in clear view, calling and darting back to the woods to take food to Junior.  Dirk kept having to back away because he couldn't focus his camera so close when they were at his feet!

Rufous Fantail

We had been seeing beautiful Rufous Fantails in the woods--their bright fan tails 'glow' so prettily in the rainforest--but they are very difficult to get pictures of, because they are so quick in their movements.  We were taken aback when this bird flew suddenly from a spot right beside us on the trail, when we realized she had a nest with tiny little nestlings in it!  We stepped back and she settled back in to keep everyone warm and cozy, we kept our distance (Dirk has a very long lens) so we'd not make her nervous or abandon her duties. Her nest is held together with spider-silk (look closely!)

We were fortunate to spot this Regent Bowerbird bower, the only reason we found it tucked back in the woods was because we heard its architect wooing his lucky lady! (We'd never seen a bower of this species before, they're very discreet bowers compared to other bowerbirds.) So as not to disturb the flirting going on, we left them to themselves and we went back later to find the bower again to take this picture.  The two birds were nowhere to be found in the middle of the day.

Notice the little blue berry carefully stashed in the back on the floor of this bower, along with some special leaves?

Regent bowerbird (female)

We watched the dashing suitor hold the berry in his beak while posing for the girl, but apparently it was all show and not an offer of food, since here the berry is, uneaten.  We understand that this is not unusual for Regent bowerbirds to use berries and leaves for decoration and props.  Their brethren, the Satin Bowerbirds, are all about blue decorations outside of the bower--including bits of blue plastic.

Spotless Crake

We were excited to find Spotless Crakes at our favourite little local wetland. Hope they found lots to eat before journeying to the next wetland.

Spotless Crake

In this case the weedy edges helped Dirk out as he was able to creep into position and then push his camera through the weeds to get a clear view. These guys are really skittish!

Buff-banded Rail

We also spotted Ballion's crake and this Buff-Banded Rail. Fun to see these birds at a suburban wetland!

Yellow TuftedHoneyeater

Black-chinned Honeyeater

Durakai Forest is a funny place, apparently very important for honeyeaters. We were over in the Stanthorpe area on a bird survey and decided to stop by here on the way back. We couldn't fins the "popular" wetland and were despairing of seeing much when this bright yellow flash stopped us. We stopped by a *tiny* little puddles and watched dozens of honey-eaters descend for their afternoon drink.






Note the spectacular eyeshadow on the two below!

White-naped Honeyeater

Yellow-tufted Honeyeater

Fuscous Honeyeater

Black-faced Monarch

White-throated Gerygone

These tiny birds are hard to find and hard to photograph, they sing a beautiful song but are still quite inconspicuous way up in the forest canopy.

Apostlebird

These wonderful Apostlebirds had a nearby communal nest with everybody hanging out in the heat of the day in a nearby tree, keeping watch

Apostlebird

Tawny Frogmouth

Looking like a dead-branch, this Frogmouth is safeguarding her nest and her eggs.

Grey Falcon

How lucky to see a Grey Falcon in our local Hinterland Park!

Magpie-lark

What a resourceful little family this is! These birds have made a safe nest in the carpark of the railway station, perched atop a single pipe. How industrious they were to haul mud and other nest supplies all that way! Both the female and male do nest-duty, this is the male bird. we only hope the chicks fledge successfully and fly right the first time, out to a nice tree and some greenery!

Magpie-lark

224) Maree to Clayton Springs

Courting Bustards

We drove back to from our jaunt into Muloorina and Lake Eyre, and at Maree, we started our trek up the Birdsville Track in earnest.  As we neared our next camp at Clayton Springs, we were thrilled to spot this Bustard pair.  Majestic birds, they walk in a stately manner across the open country.  They are surprisingly big birds, up to 1.5 meters tall!


The roadhouses are a staple of track-travel. They have food, petrol, often have rooms and are the center of their respective communities. They have amazingly eclectic collections of stuff, both for sale and as decorations (as we shall see later).





Diesel sticker shock - with two 90 liter tanks this will get painful as we go north




















But...critically, they have ice-cream!


















And a yacht club (for the once per decade where there is water in the lake! Yes they had a catamaran on a trailer)










An ocher pit just north of Maree - the reds and yellows are hydrated iron-oxide. Ocher was widely used in painting, body decorations and the preservation of skins.












Nancy modeling the latest OZ desert fashions!

It was good to know we were ok to be on the road.  We found out later they were serious about the SEVERE penalties for driving on muddy roads (because you can ruin them).  Fines are charged by the wheel  ($2000 per/wheel we were told) to discourage big trucks from even *thinking* about making a run for it.






Interesting iron stone - differential cementing created some pretty wild shapes in the boulders in our campsite.

Diamond Doves

The Diamond doves are tiny little things, about 20 cm.  We found these birds near our camp, as we settled in for the night under the trees.  Supposedly there were some wetlands here where we hoped to find lots of birds first thing in the morning.

Male White-browed Woodswallow

We did find lots and lots of Woodswallows

Female White-browed Woodswallow

-some of whom were granting us severe looks for walking in *their* woods!!!

Masked Woodswallow

Zebra Finch

And one of our favourite dry-country birds, the cheerful zebra finches. These are one of the most studied birds in the world and only one of two to have been gene-sequenced (along with the chicken). They can survive "for months without water" and so do well in Oz's "boom and bust" climate.

Sadly the wetland was pretty dry and the big flocks had moved on.

Brown Falcon

Older adult Brown Falcons have more white on them than the juveniles, so this guy must be one of the sages of the the area. 

Wattles

hot bath at Clayton Bore

 Clayton Springs is sometimes a wetland - but it was now dry. In the parking lot there was a shower - and a large tank that could be filled with warm and rather fragrantly sulpherous bore water! I took of opportunity to wash of a few days of road dust











As with most things out here, ingenuity is rampant just to get things to work!

Pink-eared Duck

Next we continue north to Mungerannie Roadhouse which we were told has a permanent wetland

223) Muloorina - Always Check Your Ducks!

A slightly demonic-eyed Gibberbird (you've got to impressed by these guys, living the hard life on the gibber plains of Central Australia--you'd have hard eyes, too!)

Our 'real' desert driving had started, we were on the lookout for the 'real' desert birds of trip.  So, we 'really' wanted to see Gibberbirds--that meant we were 'really' in the Outback because Gibberbirds live on the Gibber Plains. What is gibber?  Although the dictionary definition of gibber is "to speak rapidly and unintelligibly," gibber (with the 'g' pronounced like the 'g' in 'gum') is also the aboriginal word for 'rock.'  The Gibber Plains of Australia can be extremely inhospitable, but we saw it at a 'friendly' time of year and found it fascinating--it is a form of desert pavement.  The rocks are left when the sand and dust are blown away in the desert winds, but they polish the stones to a smooth roundness as they leave. 

range map for Gibberbirds

This is a gibber plain - hardly what we would have thought was "good habitat!

Gibber 'pavement". Although this is all pebbles with mud/dust cemeting them, it is not very hard. Its a bit spongy to walk on and would be a slow-go to drive, and destructive, as well--compressing it down would be de-stabilizing.

We were thrilled to spot a few Inland Dotterels at dusk as we eked all the birding we could out of the waning light as we drove towards Muloorina Station where we planned to camp.

Inland Dotterels have mastered the art of camouflage.  With their back to us, their mottled feathers blend into the multi-hued gravel.  Facing us, the stripes on their breast appear to be the dark sticks of a small bush. Interestingly, we found out that they eat seed and leaves during the day, and switch to eating bugs at night--they are mostly nocturnal, presumably to escape the heat.  




Much of the land (almost all) along the Birdsville and Strzelecki Tracks belongs to cattle stations (i.e. 'ranches), in part because the tracks were established to move cattle!  Camp at Muloorina is at a man-made wetland/lake that has become a haven for birds.  Explorers found they could bore (drill) into the Great Artesian Basin (which underlies parts of Queensland, New South Wales, South Australia, and Northern Territory) and it became a reliable water supply, enabling the establishment of cattle stations in the interior of Australia. 










We arrived in the dark and had a great camp under a full moon.  We could see ducks paddling around in the lake, spreading sparkles of moonlight.

There was only one other camper in this lovely spot.  The owners of Muloorina station kindly provided the opportunity for us to stay there, even providing an outhouse and fire rings for us.  Our payment for the camping at the 'honesty box' went towards the 'Flying Doctor Service'--opportunities for medical attention are few and far between out here, so this is an important community service.

Canoodling Galahs

Galahs became a constant - anywhere there was water  they were present in large numbers. Always pretty is the first and last light.....

Black-tailed Native-Hens

Pink-eared Duck

Early morning birding revealed this party of native-hens.  Wonder what a male Native-hen is called?!  










We (re)learned a critical birding lesson - always check your ducks! We saw a lot of coots, Pacific Black ducks and Hardheads - all fairly common. But then - - what is that? It's a pair of Pink-eared ducks hiding out among the more common fowl! They are rare (though as we were to find, they can be locally common) and due to a skittish nature, Dirk spent considerable time trying to get a decent picture

Two Pink-eared Ducks

They'd take flight if we got too close (and this photo was taken with a big lens)

Black-fronted Dotterel

Variegated Fairy-wren (Purple-backed race)

Variegated Fairy-wren (Purple-backed race)

We're always happy to see the cheeky Fairy-wrens.  There are several sub-species of Variegated Fairy-wrens, so these guys are members of a ssp we've never seen.

We left Muloorina (indigenous name meaning 'shady place') for an 'out and back' drive in the desert towards Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre.  We saw more flowers in the desert than you might imagine, though it IS springtime, so why not?!  Regrettably, we don't know any of their names except for the last one...

...appropriately-named Fried Egg Flowers!

Camera-man in action with the bird's eye view of Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre.

Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre (south)- heat and salt....

Recently, the lake had various amounts of water in it due to heavy rains between 2009 and 2011.  The best way to see the spectacle with all the birds who migrate here (when there is water) is to see it from overhead in a small airplane.  It must have been a sight!
 

Map of Kati-Thanda-Lake Eyre drainage

The lake has an enormous catchment (above) and was renamed in Dec 2012 to reflect its indigenous name 'Kati Thanda', which means '"the name of the lake which was formed after the skin of a kangaroo was spread over the ground." Some of the land surrounding the lake was returned to Native Title in May of 2012.

Late breakfasts were the norm, since we always had to get up at first light to look for birds.  Here Dirk is whipping up a breakfast feast in the (empty) parking lot at Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre, after driving from Muloorina.



High fashion in the desert includes a fly-headnet.  There must have been a breeze at this point, the headnet is in place over the hat, ready to come out as needed.

contemplating Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre

sand, sand everywhere!

Freckled Duck

We drove back by the lake at Muloorina for one last look - wait.... that's a Freckled Duck!!!! - a real rarity. Remember - always check your ducks!

Brolga

Four Brolgas were hiding out at a small bore where we stopped to check for birds.  Lots of cow-trampling, few birds.  But it was kind of in the middle of the day so we couldn't expect much.

We could see this sculpture, in the middle of 'nowhere',  from miles away--the ground was so very flat.  It must have been made by some creative soul that had access to a forklift.

Dingo fence

According to Wikipedia, "The Dingo Fence or Dog Fence is a pest-exclusion fence that was built in Australia during the 1880s and finished in 1885, to keep dingoes out of the relatively fertile south-east part of the continent (where they had largely been exterminated) and protect the sheep flocks of southern Queensland. It is one of the longest structures in the world and is the world's longest fence. It stretches 5,614 kilometres (3,488 mi)."

 

We're facing the wrong direction according to the sign, but really, we're headed to Birdsville!