Warm, sunny, and
breezy
I birded Kewarra Beach Resort before
we left for the town of Kuranda in the World Heritage Rainforest. As I walked near the lagoon located in
the heart of the resort, I saw a flash of white high in the trees on the
opposite side. I snapped off a
couple of frames and then went to the field guide to see what it was I was photographing. The guide book indicated that this was
a Pied Imperial pigeon, a tad more impressive than our North American pigeons
in my humble opinion.
A I
continued my walk around the property, a fairly large bird scurried across my
path. Then a second. Both birds busied themselves with
scratching through the leaf litter in search of whatever seemed edible and
didn’t really seem to mind my presence.
These were a pair of Orange-footed Scrubfowl and I soon realized that
around the resort, they were not all that uncommon and I continued to run into
them throughout our stay.
My
last new “lifer” was a brightly colored member of the parrot family. I heard quite a few of these beauties,
but trying to get a good look let alone a good shot was like one of those
“where’s Waldo” puzzles. The bird
is predominantly green and feeds high in the canopy among equally brilliant
foliage. The one saving grace is that
the Scaley-breasted lorikeet has a garishly blood-red bill. Picking out the flash of red and then
firing in the general direction, I was able to get a photo decent enough for
documentation purposes. Don’t be
looking for this in any bird mags or galleries, but it’s good enough for here!
Although I would have loved to
remain on the property of the resort and continued to bird these amazing
rainforest grounds, it was time to head up into the oldest rainforest in the
world, the World Heritage Rainforest at Kuramba in Queensland. We visited a commercial site known as
“Bird World” which was actually
a pretty good way to familiarize ourselves with the native species we might
encounter during our remaining days in Australia. Sharon befriended an individual whose species we had already
added to our life-list, but being in a bus at the time in the outback near
Ayer’s Rock, I did not have the
opportunity to photograph the bird.
The bird was too good looking and too friendly to ignore now, however,
so I included the bird here with the understanding that it doesn’t really
qualify as a real nature shot.
From here, it was up to the rainforest
proper and a ride through and over it via the Caravonica Skyline Cableway. We were joined by our Ranger, Jeremy, a
member of the local indigenous tribe.
He advised us up front that most of the creatures of the rainforest are
nocturnal, so we shouldn’t expect to see an awful lot of fauna. That being said, we came upon a Bush
turkey almost immediately, our first bird of the forest.
Later, we visited Hartley’s crocodile
farm. Our experience in St. Augustine, FL has
shown that birds do tend to congregate around these sites as a source of food
and water. We certainly were not
disappointed at the results we got here.
In fact, the bird of the day was found high in the treetops surrounding
the lagoon where the rocs were kept.
White-bellied sea eagles, another bird for the life-list was in easy
view and made a great subject for today’s blog.
Our final bird of today’s blog is a majestic stork,
the Black-necked stork which was found alongside the same lagoon. A fine fitting finale to today’s list
of birds. Tomorrow, it’s down to
Sydney for the next four days after an early morning balloon flight over the Atherton Tablelands.
What will urban birding bring?
Check us out…….
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