Kingfishers

The rainforest of Iron Range is rich in kingfishers and we caught several of a few species in the mist nets. The Azure Kingfisher above and the Little Kingfisher, below hunt fish in the small slow-flowing creeks. And although they look bright and boldly coloured when in the hand, they are very easily overlooked when they perch quietly on low branches above the water, often in deep shadow, low down as they are under the rainforest canopy. 



One of the more flamboyant kingfisher species is the Buff-breasted Paradise Kingfisher, below. These birds have spectacular long white tail-streamers which flash as the birds swoop through the lower layer of the rainforest. And these birds are migrants from Papua New Guinea. They all had freshly-grown flight feathers, including their tails, which must have been grown before they flew across the sea to Cape York.

The Buff-breasted Paradise Kingfishers hunt terrestrial animals on the forest floor. And like the other species they are difficult to see except for the white flash of their tails and backs as they dash through the trees.



On the road north

Northern Queensland is crocodile country - and they are there, lying quietly, watching.....

I kept a list of birds seen on the trip and there were 222 altogether. Here is a selection of some seen on the way north.

 Plumed Whistling Ducks Dendrocygna eytoni

 White-bellied Sea-eagle Haliaeetus leucogaster

 Squatter Pigeon Petrophassa scripta

 Australian Bustard Ardeotis australis

Golden-shouldered Parrot Psephotus chyrsopterygius

These parrots are rare and vulnerable to extinction as they live a specialised life. There might be about 2000 of these birds in the wild, eight of them in this one tree. They are restricted to nesting in cavities in termite hills which they did each year, and they feed in grassy wooded savanna which is often burned. If their habitat is lost, so will they.

Bush Stone-Curlews

During the past two weeks I have been in northern Queensland, on a trip to the Iron Range national park where I was part of a group banding birds. On the way north I flew into Cairns and went bird-watching in the local botanic gardens and adjacent cemetry - a well known haunt of Bush Stone-curlews Burhinus magnirostris.

These birds forage and breed quite happily on the short turf and bare patches of earth between the gravestones. Once a familiar bird in southern Australia, the stone-curlews are now rare wherever there are red foxes. These are European predators which were deliberately introduced by man over a hundred years ago. The foxes have not yet colonised the far north-east and the stone-curlews find sanctuary in this cemetery.

 A pair of stone-curlews lead their chick through the tombstones.

A group of six stone-curlews pass the middle of the day under the shade of a tree. They are nocturnal birds and their calls at night have an eerie beauty.

Bearded Dragon

This handsome male bearded dragon was out displaying today. He has a sulphur-yellow colour to his head, legs and upper tail, and a dark grey throat which he extends while bobbing his head. Another one I watched last week was doing this on the top of a high broken branch. Very spectacular.

 They have sharp spiked scales on their head, legs and along their flanks.

The spikes around their face are particularly long and sharp, all for defence and not only from predators, but from other male dragons.

In a previous blog page I showed a fierce fight between two male dragons. Here we can see the value of the spiked scales, even on the eyelids. Many of the scale tips are broken, he has some missing from his upper lip and chin, and there is a hole in his throat. All this was probably inflicted by an opponent in a fight with another male. Their teeth are obviously sharp and strong.

Brown Snake

This brown snake was out hunting today, the first I have seen this year. He was right next to a bird-watching hide at Kelly's Swamp in Canberra. I only saw two or three snakes last year, while I used to see two or three per day before the drought. Although it was a wet rainy year last year, their numbers had crashed during the previous several years of dry conditions, when there were few mice or frogs. The mice and frog numbers are high this year so hopefully the snakes will have a better time too.  

Brown snakes kill more people in Australia than any other snake, because they are common in suburbia and cleared woodland where people tend to walk. This one was well behaved though.

He was about three and a half feet long.

Fall from nest

Two tawny frogmouth chicks fell with their nest as it dropped out of a branch fork during heavy rain last night. They are only about three weeks old and would have been in the nest for at least another week. Even then they are dependent upon their parents for another month after that. 

Fortunately their father gathered them onto a log by morning where they were sitting, all nice and warm and dry. And safe from foxes and hopefully cats.

 

The chicks were well dried and warm although it was still raining.

They offered a splendid photo opportunity.

The adult female sat quietly in a tree 30m away, watching all the time.

Tawny Frogmouths 2011

The first of the tawny frogmouth chicks have fledged, or rather left the nest. They are dependent on their parents for another month yet, as they fly around their territory in short flutters between trees.

 A male frogmouth sits with a chick recently out of the nest - one metre away in the fork on the right.

This was on the 14th October.

 A female frogmouth watches over her mate on the nest fifty metres away in the next tree.

Two female frogmouths roost together while a male sits on chicks in a nest nearby. Who is the mother of the chicks? Is the second female tolerated because she is a daughter from  last year's nest. The birds are identified as females by the red/rufous on the their neck and epaulets. The males are more uniformly grey.

Bearded Dragons

I came across these two bearded dragons today, they were so engrossed in one another that they ignored me while they continued their little test of strength.

They were really focused on one another for several minutes before they started fighting, probably because they were very similar in size.

 They snapped at one another's heads, trying to lock a grip on their opponent.

 And they were quick; very, very quick...

 Then one gave in and simply ran off down the track.

Leaving the victor to pose in triumph.

Road Kill

While driving back from a banding trip at Charcoal Tank yesterday there were a few very heavy showers of rain. This attracted lots of birds to come down and drink from puddles on the tarmac. These were mostly parrots; galahs, eastern rosellas, crimson rosellas, and superb parrots. Unfortunately many were killed by passing vehicles. This handsome male superb parrot was one of the victims. This is a species listed as vulnerable - if only the general public showed some more care and genuine concern for wildlife they could easily have avoided killing all these birds. I avoided them easily.

How many more were killed that day elsewhere, how many are killed each year?

Woodswallows

Adult male white-browed woodswallow

I was helping to catch and band birds on a field study run by Richard Allen last weekend at the Weddin Mountains. The weather on Sunday was a bit windy for efficient mist-netting but we caught 108 birds, mostly on the Saturday.

The main birds of the trip were woodswallows. There was a flock of about 700 flying overhead most of Saturday, and they were coming down to feed on nectar from flowering Ironbark trees, then they came in to roost in the trees at dusk. The main species was white-browed, of which we caught 40, and there were also masked (2 caught) and dusky (1 caught).

A dusky woodswallow on the left and

a white-browed woodswallow on the right

Among the other birds we caught were a male and female sacred kingfisher,

Male sacred kingfisher

and a one of those wonderful kingfishers, a kookaburra.

Kookaburra

Pardalotes

I was out catching and banding birds at the weekend helping Mark Clayton with his long-running study of birds in the Charcoal Tank Nature Reserve near West Wyalong in south-west New South Wales. This is a stand of woodland, a tiny remnant of what was once typical wooded plains in the area. The main trees are red ironbark which were flowering and attracting numerous honeyeaters and the little jewels of the woodland, pardalotes. There were two species: the spotted and the striated, and we caught both.  

Spotted pardalote - Pardalotus punctatus

This is an adult male, identifiable by his white-spotted black crown, bold white supercilium and bright yellow throat. The female has yellowish spots on her crown and less pronounced supercilium and throat colours. The young birds have a pale crown base colour and greyish back with very little scalloping of the back feather pattern.

The bright fire-red base to the tail  of the spotted and the bright yellow forehead of the striated are the most readily identifiable markings between the two species when seen briefly in the field. 

Striated pardalote - Pardalotus striatus, subspecies substriatus

This is an adult bird as it has a full white supercilium and streaked crown of white feathers on black. The sexes are identical. Young birds of the year have a faint yellowish supercilium and a pale buff-green freckled crown.

The broad white markings along the veins of the primaries are a feature of the subspecies which is the typical type of the wooded plains west of the Great divide in southern New South Wales.

Possums

I made a stock check at the weekend of what possums were sleeping where in the garden. These are common brush-tailed possums which are common in suburban Canberra. The one above is a young male which was in a nestbox above the logpile. He came down willingly for a piece of bread and jam.

The next four shots are of a mother with her well grown youngster which were sleeping in one of the boxes in the back garden. She came out first and waited for the young one to climb out after her. The boxes were put up to encourage rosellas, crimson or eastern, to nest in the garden. However,the possums found the soft pine wood easy to chew and they quickly enlarged the entrance holes to fit them, and they have subsequently taken them all over. They use them for alternative roost holes used in rotation, although they do use one or other box for long periods before shifting.

Once out the young one quickly clambered onto the mother's back.

Then off they went up the tree and through the continuous canopy of the trees along the back fence. 

Snowy Mountains

I was snow-boarding up in the Snowy mountains last week, and it was snowy. There was a steady south-east wind bringing in cold moist air all week. This created constant light snowfall and freezing fog. The best riding was through the woods on deep consolidated snow, picking your own slalom route through the trees.

 The leaves on the snow gums were coated with thick ice as the fog froze around them.

 The granite tors were coated in ice too.

The whole landscape was deep in winter's grip. Wonderful stuff.