Which Wins: Dysentery or Pneumonia? (+Cairns Aquarium ++)

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I was going to go out to the esplanade for sunrise, but I was feeling too tired this morning so slept in until 7. Waking up at 7 AM is a massive lie in for a birder (but an early start for a mammalwatcher who's been spotlighting. So it can be both for me, as it suits).

Instead, I packed my stuff and was out to the esplanade after breakfast to pass the time birding before everyone else is ready to leave. As I briefly mentioned yesterday, my parents caught cold-type illnesses so they went to a doctor to check it. I'm just going to note that here for continuity in case they get too ill to be able to continue the trip as planned and drive me to all the places that I have planned because in the tablelands especially, the wildlife sites are not accessible from where we're staying and all involve short drives to get to. Hopefully it won't be an issue and they'll be better (and I won't catch anything) but it's just easier to note it now in advance.

Birding the esplanade is always good fun. You never know what will turn up, as exemplified by yesterday's Beach Stone-curlew. It was quieter than usual though being a hot day and the tide being very far out so the birds were far away. A few hours on my own allowed me to spend ages pouring over the field guide to identify waders. I've never been that good at wader ID but the field guide isn't bad for it. Most of the waders are summer visitors to Australia, but small numbers of most species overwinter as well (it's Southern Hemisphere winter now, remember).

By 10:30 it was too hot and the tide too far out to bird the esplanade and my parents would be quite a bit longer at the hospital because my dad had 'a light touch of pneumonia down one bronchus'. Dysentery is much more impressive and explorer-ish though. Dysentery is the sort of thing explorers should die of in deepest darkest Borneo as they write their last words in their journal lying in their tent three weeks treck from the East India Company steamer ship at port. While Pneumonia is the sort of thing Victorians in London die of in black and white films while down the mines or up the chimneys.

Anyway, I decided the best thing to do while waiting in Cairns would be to visit the Cairns aquarium.

The aquarium was under construction last time I was here two years ago and I really wanted to visit. The entry fee is high at $42 per person, but aquariums are always very expensive since they have high running costs and this is quite a big one and right in the Cairns city. It’s a decently big aquarium with a number of large tanks and a decent collection including herps. I started making a species list, but as is often the case with aquariums the signage was just too poor to be able to do decently. Even some reptiles were unsigned and in the large reef tanks only a very small proportion of things were signed. The whole place was done to a very high standard though with large attractive aquaria and interesting displays including, for example, arranging the small reef tanks by colour with an explanation of the function of each colour. The aquarium seemed to hold entirely species found in the area, fresh and saltwater tanks, including a large oceanic shark tank with a tunnel. Not a bad aquarium at all.

I was, conveniently, done with the aquarium only a few minutes before my parents were done at the hospital so we could head off driving towards Mossman, out next stop, which is actually only just over an hour’s drive from Cairns. On the way though, I managed to get in a decent hour and a half ish visit to Cattana Wetlands which is on the way. This is a fairly popular birding site in Yorkey’s Knob which is really just a suburb of Smithfield which is a suburb of Cairns, but yes Yorkey’s Knob is actually what it’s called. And it covers an area of lakes/billabongs with woodlands and dry forest around. Although the waterbirds were not very exciting and decidedly unimpressive compared to those of the vast wetlands in the Northern Territory, the paperbark and eucalyptus woodlands that surrounded the wetland had a number of nice birds and some new species for me too. Mostly rather drab new species, but all very nice. I also saw a pair of Lovely Fairy-wrens here and I was especially happy to see a male in full stunning colour having just ticked a female. I never like ticking a species from a juvenile or female or something like that when it is the full colour male that is distinctive and impressive.

Despite being middayish and early afternoon at Cattana, there was lots of shade and a nice cool breeze and a surprising amount of bird activity given the time of day. A nice little site that’s well worth a visit.

We then drove out to Mossman, stopping for a late lunch on the way as well as to look at the view on the nice scenic drive up and got to Mossman in the evening. The place that I really wanted to go from here was Mount Lewis which is supposed to be an excellent site for spotlighting (as well as for birding in the day, but especially for spotlighting). We will actually be spending a single night nearer Mount Lewis after Mossman, but ideally I wanted to try here for more than one night with the main reason being that this is the only place where I will be in range for Daintree River Ringtail Possum. Mount Lewis also holds Green, Herbert River, and Lemuroid ringtail possum including the rare all white form of the latter. Quite the place for endemic ringtail possums! From Mossman it’s about 30 minutes drive maybe to the entrance to the National Park where there are two unsealed gravel roads (but compacted gravel and only slightly bumpy, the sort of road where we could go 40 kph in a high ground clearance but 2WD SUV) into the park. The Mount Lewis road which is mostly in the 600-700m range and the Summit Road (which doesn’t seem to officially be called this but that’s what the mammal book calls it) that goes up to 1200m. The mammal book recommends spotlighting along the summit road, but for tonight I just persuaded my dad to drive me to the Mount Lewis Road which is closer and above 600m should be in range for all those wonderful ringtail possums which apparently are easy to find including the Daintree Ringtail which is ‘commonly encountered’. So I had probably about 40 minutes of spotlighting time up there going along the road spotlighting and of the four species of ringtail possum saw… absolutely none. I did see one possum though… another Striped! Who says Striped Possums are difficult to find? I’ve seen and photographed two of them two nights in a row in totally different areas! (I did actually kind of see what I think may have been another possum that looked paler further in the forest which I thought was a brushtail but on reflection could well have been a Daintree Ringtail but I don’t know). I did see a Long-nosed Bandicoot though, and there were some microbats too. Running across the road in the car, we also saw a Red-legged Pademelon and lots of Agile Wallabies.

I really think Mount Lewis would normally be more productive at night and from what I have read and what I can see on the internet, Daintree River Ringtail should be decently common. Hopefully I’ll get to try the Summit Road that the mammal book suggests. If I can get Daintree Ringtail here, then I have a good chance of getting a full set of the tablelands possums on this trip (except the Long-tailed Pygmy Possum which is nearly-impossible, but now that I’ve found Striped Possum (twice!) which is supposed to be the trickiest of the proper big possums, if I can get Daintree Ringtail I reckon I can get the full set excluding the pygmy. That would be my absolute ideal outcome mammalwatching wise, though it’s rather ambitious.)

Oh and I heard a boobook owl very close by in a tree too but I couldn’t find it of course because as I’ve said owls don’t exist and it was obviously just a tape recorder that someone had hidden high up a tree on the side of a dirt road to nowhere in the middle of a forest. I’ll have up to two more nights to try for Daintree River Ringtail, another night from Mossman where it really is a rather long drive all the way to Mount Lewis, and then one night where I’m staying not far from the bottom of the road up at a place called Kingfisher Park Birders Lodge (which should be excellent for birding and spotlighting anyway). But the tablelands possum chasing has begun! Hopefully the next six nights after this one will involve less chasing but more seeing than this night did!

New Birds:

Red-capped Plover

Greater Sandplover

Red-necked Stint

Lesser Sandplover

Common Greenshank

Fairy Gerygone

Brown-backed Honeyeater

Restless Flycatcher

Little Shrike-thrush

Grey Fantail (this should be on earlier, actually from the first day in Darwin again me being lazy and not checking the field guide properly)

Fuscous Honeyeater



Mammals:

Long-nosed Bandicoot

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