Lamington National Park Day Two

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To do the morning bird walk which we definitely wanted to do, we had to be up early. Five o’clock to be specific, to allow time to get ready for the day before going out for the walk. I was there a few minutes early to look around outside and I saw two new birds, the first was seen hopping around on the tarmac right in front of the doorway and was a Yellow-throated Scrubwren, and there was also a Grey Shrike-thrush in a tree nearby. Soon the guide for the bird walk arrived, this wasn’t one of the usual guides, but a different guy called Glen and apparently they only let him to do the morning bird walks twice a week, at other times he drove the bus, or so he said, so we were lucky to get him on one of our mornings. He was very experienced and had been doing film making and photography in Lamington National Park for decades so he knew everything you asked him about. The bird walk started right outside with Glen yelling “LOUIS!” and having a Lewin’s Honeyeater fly down onto the fence right in front of us. It turned out that he had spent years working with the birds in the forest outside O’Reilly’s and had tamed several. He also threw some sultanas into the air for Louis the honeyeater to catch in flight. Also gathered in the trees were many Pied Currawongs, King Parrots and Crimson Rosellas, as well as lots of Brush Turkeys on the ground, however those weren’t the main things we were waiting for because also in the trees were Regent and Satin Bowerbirds. These flew down onto the fence and onto Glen’s hand to get sultanas

though the other birds also had the same idea and had to be shooed off. Once we had finished with the bowerbirds we headed down the boardwalk to be met by many White-browed and Yellow-throated Scrubwrens coming in for food. As we continued along, Glen started called for another of his birds, Mrs Peggy (or Piggy, I’m not sure) who was an Eastern Yellow Robin. He explained that Mrs Peggy was actually a Mr Peggy despite what he first though when naming him and he and his family would come down every morning for a bit of food and stayed there very prominently not shy in the slightest.

We were followed by the Peggys as we walked down the boardwalk and the next of Glen’s birds to be called was Mr Whippy. It took a few shouts of ‘Whippeeee!’ before he came down but soon Mr, Mrs, and Master Whippy showed up for breakfast. As you may guess these were Eastern Whipbirds, and they did not live up to their reputation of being shy and difficult to see because this family of whipbirds was tame enough to fly onto Glen’s hand!

Followed by our entourage of birds now consisting of two species of scrubwrens, yellow robins, and whipbirds we continued down the boardwalk passing some non-tame Pademelons and Logrunners and I asked about the best place to find some of the birds I was looking for. Of course Glen knew where and how I could find absolutely anything though one of the species I really wanted would be quite difficult. I had been rather obsessed with birds of paradise for years and after seeing my first ones in captivity in Germany last year I wanted to step it up and find one in the wild, so of course I wanted to find a Paradise Riflebird. Apparently they are relatively easy to find in breeding season when they call, but at this time of year they just fly about in the canopy in near-silence with only the occasional contact call. Glen suggested a route to try and find them and I decided that would be my mission for the day, though I was rather disheartened to hear that one of the other bird guides who just started two and a half weeks ago was yet to see a riflebird!

Anyway we soon reached the final destination of the bird walk, a Satin Bowerbird's Bower. This had an intact bower and lots of blue bits of plastic and stuff around though Glen said he hadn’t seen the owner of the bower for a couple of weeks and was rather worried about him. Anyway he told us lots of stuff about that bower and bowerbirds and Sir David Attenborough coming to film there and interesting things like that and the whipbirds and scrubwrens that had followed us down were hopping about in the bower (the robins had left a few metres further back).

Also in and around the bower were Brush Turkeys, and Glen had no time for those and threw sticks and rocks and things at them to try and get rid of them.

We then headed back to the guesthouse with a slightly different route passing what Glen described as the biggest and ugliest tree and I named Telstra vulgaris (Telstra is an Australian mobile network provider), the Common Vulgar Telephone Signal Tower. Also around here was a Brush Turkey that Glen was unusually friendly with called Hoppy who had an injured leg. Hoppy was given some food while other turkeys were being shooed away. The thought did cross my mind that the cause of Hoppy’s hopping may have been an overzealous bird guide throwing sticks! We soon got back to O’Reilly’s (we hadn’t actually gone very far) where I got some more information off Glen and we popped back to the room very briefly before going out for the day. Before starting on the walk though, I wanted to check out a hedge that was around the back of my room where apparently Superb Fairy-wrens liked to hang out and there they were, though unfortunately no coloured males and none posed very well for pictures.

We then started our walk for the day which started by going down the same boardwalk and then continuing beyond the end. We also passed the tree top walk again and looked at a little garden thing which had a few planted orchids and stuff like that. All very interesting but no birds worth noting, however there was a nice view of a Red-legged Pademelon nearby.

We then continued on the track to look for the riflebirds which was a little track to a waterfall called Elabana Falls and them some tracks in the forest around there which Glen thought gave me my best chance for the riflebird as well as a few other things that I really wanted. For the first hour or so there were no new birds for me, but several pairs of Logrunners were cool, that's a species that you can never get tired of, and I even managed to get some acceptable quality video of them. And there were all the common birds like the various little brown ones seen the previous day, and scrubwrens, and yellow robins. I was looking out a lot for doves and pigeons in the canopy of which there were several species that I wanted to see as well as listening out for a lyrebird and looking for various other things as well. I did eventually manage to see one of the key birds that I was looking for around here though, a Rufous Scrub-bird not too far away lurking in the dark depths of the undergrowth before disappearing off. I had heard that they were extremely difficult to find so to be honest I had expected to need to put in more effort to find one if I really wanted to. Just lucky I guess.

In the afternoon we reached Elabana Falls (people who have been there would know it’s not actually that far away, but we didn’t go straight there and went along a different track first to look for stuff) which was really cool with palms and tree ferns and all that sort of rainforesty stuff (I’m not a botanist as you can tell) and the view was nice too. No frogs around though. While we were standing there admiring the view I saw some large grey things fly into a tree on the opposite side of the falls. I was able to track them down through the binoculars where I could determine that they were Topknot Pigeons. Supposedly fairly common but I was very pleased to see them, particularly as I didn’t see them again. Although we had some snacks for lunch to keep us going we wanted to go back for some more proper food so we headed along the track back to O’Reilly’s. Not too far up from the falls, my aunt called out to say that she had seen a black bird with some shiny blue bits on it fly into a tree. The riflebird? Excited I went up to frantically try and find it in the tree. It was moving around a lot and fairly high up, but it definitely was a Paradise Riflebird. A few minutes later I realised it wasn’t just one, but a pair of them. There was a female too! I was so excited! They flew around a bit not stopping for long in any spot before they flew off into the forest and I lost them. After the riflebird there was one new bird seen on the way back, a Fan-tailed Cuckoo in a fairly exposed area sitting still nicely for a few seconds before flying to a nearby tree and repeating the process. All of the pictures were horribly out-of-focus and blurry though. I blame the dark environment of the rainforest, though it’s probably my fault for not focusing properly. The rest of the walk was uneventful with the exception of a fleeting glimpse of a Red-legged Pademelon dashing off but the sound of the various birds and the penetrating whipbird calls, as well as the awesome vegetation made the walk extremely enjoyable and I’m fairly sure I heard a lyrebird too as well as another Scrub-bird.

After a bit of proper food we had the time left in the day for a second walk of a few hours. We decided to head the opposite direction from the morning’s walk to visit another waterfall, Moran Falls largely because apparently this was a good track to try for the lyrebird and also to look for Pale-yellow Robins. Unfortunately, it soon started to drizzle, not proper rain but a light drizzle that just about made it to the forest floor and enough to be a bit unpleasant. I did hear what I am fairly sure were lyrebirds but they were quite far away and I saw many birds that I had already seen which were still cool to see. The robin advice was good though because I found two Pale-yellow Robins near to the falls. As the name would suggest they were like the Eastern Yellow Robins but more boring and unnoticeable in every way. Still nice little birds though. The falls themselves were really awesome, as was the forest of course, and while I was watching the falls a Grey Goshawk flew by and landed in a very far off tree disappearing there. On the way back I found another Fan-tailed Cuckoo (again my camera decided not to focus on it) and we had another look at the Red-necked Pademelons on the campsite before going to dinner. Such cute little things.

At dinner that night I discovered that at one of the windows of the restaurant they left out food for the possums! I wish I had known that yesterday because they apparently get Short-eared Brushtail Possums every night (actually I was told that a hybrid between a black possum and a normal possum came there every night, but this was actually the grey morph of the Short-eared Brushtail Possum). Well that night we waited for a bit, no possums came, we had the food, no possums came, and just as we were about to go and try our luck in the forest, an absolutely stunning solidly jet-black Short-eared Brushtail Possum showed up and just sat there munching away on fruit.

However awesome a possum it is, there is only so much watching a possum eat until it gets boring so we went out into the forest to find a less tame wild possum. The first thing we saw upon stepping out of the building though was a Long-nosed Bandicoot just on the lawn digging little holes in it amongst the dozen or so grazing Pademelons and then we headed onto the boardwalk again. Right at the start of the boardwalk though two eyes shone back at my torch from a tree which turned out to belong to another Short-eared Brushtail Possum, however this was the grey morph with the yellow belly rather than the all black one. This turned out to be the more common of the two. There was nothing apart from spiders seen for a while until an antechinus darted past in the leaves. Although a few species do occur in Lamington National Park, I was told that all the antechinuses ever found anywhere near the guesthouse have been brown, so I was confident enough to call this as a Brown Antechinus.

After the boardwalk we went along the road again. As well as loads of Pademelons I found about half a dozen Common Ringtail Possums, a single grey morph Short-eared Brushtail Possum and somehow seen by my aunt in silhouette from my torch, a Southern Boobook that wasn’t even calling or giving any eyeshine at all from closed eyes.
We also looked in an area near the campsite where a Marbled Frogmouth had been seen, but it wasn’t there (it hadn't been seen at roost around there so I didn't really expect to find it). After quite a while of spotlighting, we were exhausted and went to bed, setting our alarms for another 5 AM get up the next morning. What an awesome day.

New birds seen:
Yellow-throated Scrubwren
Grey Shrike-thrush
Satin Bowerbird
Superb Fairy-wren
Rufous Scrub-bird
Topknot Pigeon
Paradise Riflebird
Fan-tailed Cuckoo
Pale-yellow Robin
Grey Goshawk
Southern Boobook

New mammals:
Short-eared Brushtail Possum
Brown Antechinus

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