Conference Birding - Brisbane 20-23 March 2018 (1 Viewer)

My birding on this trip was limited to two mornings when I wandered no further that 100m from the Ibis Hotel at Brisbane Airport, and a couple hours in two of Brisbane's city centre parks.

While this might seem unambitious given the ornithological riches of the Brisbane area I was accompanied by my non-birding wife, who wanted to shop and see some of the sights. Also, I'm a sucker for squeezing the last drop of birding juice out of small bits of habitat around airports after spending five years of lunchtimes scouring my now defunct Magic Roundabout patch at Hong Kong Airport.

First up after checking in around 0930 a Pied Butcherbird perched on a lamppost affirmed I was most definitely back in Australia, and distantly soaring birds included an Australian Pelican and Brahminy Kites, with Welcome Swallows and what turned out to be a dozen or so Tree Martins providing the aerobatics in the foreground.

The habitat across the road was an area of casuarinas and other trees on some marshy round complete with a tidal creek between a couple of roads. A flask of white proven to be the belly of one of four White-breasted Woodswallows that were making good use of the taller branches of a dead tree, which also held the first of several Australian White Ibises. A family of four crows included three dark-eyed youngsters and a white-eyed adult. Any guidance on the specific ID would be most welcome.

That was all I had time for before heading into the city, which was largely unproductive until we spent a couple hours in the Brisbane City Botanic Gardens. The common birds here were Noisy Miners and lots more Australian White Ibis wandering the lawns, with a couple of Dusky Moorhens around the ponds, and the occasional flyover of Rainbow Lorikeet and Sulphur-crested Cockatoos. The quality here came in the form of a Laughing Kookaburra hunting around an impressively humungous Banyan tree and half a dozen magnificently quirky Bush Stone Curlews mooching in the beds of the nearby rose garden. As tame as ever I was able to walk right up to them and fire away, with the only sign of disapproval being a low purring growl from one of the birds.

Just as we were leaving an Australian Brush Turkey jerked its way across the lawn. Imagine a dark grey chicken with a bare red head and neck with a wattle that looks like a necklace made of scrambled eggs and circular paddle-liketail held perpendicular to the ground like a fish's tail. Well worth a look here if this sounds too wierd to be real!

Cheers
Mike

You sure seemed to pack quite a lot in there Mike and got some super pictures too.

my now defunct Magic Roundabout patch at Hong Kong Airport.

Click to expand...

Mmmmm..... a shame that, I used to love popping in to that thread when I had some spare minutes.

What happened to it?

Thanks Delia - Australian birds seem to be much more willing to be photographed than their Hong Kong counterparts.

As for the Roundabout the sad truth is that the golf course and the roundabout itself have been stripped bare of vegetation and tuned into construction sites to make way for the development of a new shopping centre and the infrastructure for the airport's third runway, which is now under construction. Sadly my lunchtimes at the airport are a great deal less interesting now . . .

despite being stuck at at the airport for the rest of my visit I did manage a couple of hours in the strip of habitat opposite the hotel. First up was the same flock of Tree Martins I'd seen yesterday. It took a while for them to come lower and convince me that they did not show a brownish cap that is diagnostic of Fairy Martin, but eventually a couple dropped low over the drainage ditch and I had good views of the dark blue crowns. I found a promising-looking path across the channel and into the trees, but this only led to a temporary carpark. However given the number of wild beasties that have developed entertaining ways to kill the unwary, an asphalt carpark at least gave me the confidence to bird without continually checking where I was stepping on or brushing past a snake, spider or (my newest addition to the lexicon of death) paralysing ticks.

The first bird I locked onto was a small pale-bellied passerine, which showed very little of itself except the pale belly and pale undertail before drifting into the canopy and disappearing. The nearest fit was for Mangrove Gerygone, which is more monochrome that the other possibilities. As I pished a Grey Fantail came bouncing in to check me out, calling cheerfully. The casuarinas also held the first of at least three Grey Shrike Thrushes - a bird I see easily every time I come to Australia - including a juvenile with a streaky breast and soft rufous supercilium, and perhaps my favourite bird of this trip the wonderfully confiding Black-faced Cuckooshrike. These are significantly larger than the Black-winged Cuckooshrikes I see in Hong Kong, and on both days one was happy to come in close for a good hard stare. Another bird similar to my usual fare was a Spangled Drongo, which had the same glossy wing coverts and neck spots, but lacked up-curved tail and long wire-thin head feathers that give Hair-crested Drongo its name.

A Brown Honeyeater working its way along the trees finally showed enough of itself for its very plainness to be diagnostic, and the much more distinctive Striped Honeyeater feeding among epiphytes on some more distant trees sadly never co-operated enough to be photographed. Also stripy grey and white, but very different in jizz was (at least from the front-on views I got) a Green-backed Oriole showing a long slightly decurved pinkish bill and heavier body.

The family of what I think were Torresian Crows put on another good show, a couple of the youngsters foraging along the edges of the carpark while another sat up on a streetlight and called repeatedly. Another lamppost seen distantly through the trees held a grey-bodied White-faced Heron and along the fence line family parties of Red-backed Fairy Wrens and Superb Fairy Wrens did an excellent job of staying just out of range, and a trip of Magpie Larks flapped heavily through, stopped to serif the crows had found anything interesting , and flapped off again. Another contender for bird of the trip was a Double-Barred Finch. Much friendlier than the Fairy-wrens, it perched on the chicken-wire fence eating grass seeds and showing off first its pure white face edged elegantly in black, and the thin black bars across its treat and lower belly, and then turning sideways to display the white-notched coverts and tertials, white rump and black tail. Much more tantalising were a couple of tiny finches that flew over high showing a white wing bar and yellow around the tail, which I strongly suspected of being Spotted Pardalote.

Other bits and pieces included a three or four typically lively Willie Wagtails, a couple Silvereyes, two or three Welcome Swallows with the Tree Martins, an Australian Magpie (one of my favourite Aussie birds - click here for a quick burst of two birds practicing their synchronised singing), a couple of Little Egrets that dropped into the creek, a Little Black Cormorant swimming along the creek, a Chestnut Teal that flew out of the creek, and lowering the tone nicely just as time ran out, three House Sparrows and two Common Mynas.

The only other birds of interest were a couple of Pacific Black Duck, two more Chestnut Teal, a Great Egret and a wonderful Royal Spoonbill sweeping its way across a small pool all of which appeared during a tour of the construction site that will become Brisbane Airport's new runway.

A total of 38 species seems like a small return, but given the limitations of my available time and freedom to roam further I was happy with my haul. Next up - and with a far greater scope for birding will be my newly started three week trip to the US East Coast (NYC and Connecticut) and Argentina!


Cheers
Mike

Here's a couple more pix of the Double-barred Finch.

Cheers
Mike

Yes, I've always found the City Centre Botanic Gardens in Brisbane to be good for bush stone curlews, although I never approach them close enough to get any kind of a purring growl from them! Once I saw a movement from the ground where they usually are and a human vagrant was lying there!

Brisbane Airport has proved to be one of my best for birds globally.

It is a shame that the Magic Roundabout has gone. As if there aren't enough shopping centres. I always wonder who buys the stuff in there. Me, I spend some of my money on holidays instead!