edenwatcher
Well-known member
In the second half of October I visited eastern Australia (QLD and NSW) on an organised tour. This is not really the ideal way of visiting the country as 2 weeks is not long enough to do it justice and it is easy enough to cover independently. However given that my annual birding holiday is time away from the family, and thus has time constraints, it is a much more efficient way of doing things. Also, never having visited Australia before, it was going to be steep learning curve. I am eternally grateful to my (birding) wife for permitting me such indulgences, whilst she looks after the boys ... Payback time will follow once they are older!
I left Edinburgh on a grey afternoon on Sunday 18th October and flew down to Heathrow. My onward flight to Singapore with British Airways left late evening. After a sleepless night, mitigated by excellent in-flight entertainment, we landed in Singapore around 5pm local time. After collecting my boarding pass for the onward flight to Cairns via Darwin, there was enough daylight to see if I could find some birds from the terminal building. I managed 4 species, but 2 were lifers: Javan (white-vented) myna and Pacific swallow, ... which was nice.
The flight to Cairns was with Jetstar, a Qantas codeshare partner. We were on the ground in Darwin for about 90 minutes in the middle of the night and reached Cairns shortly before 08:00 local time (BST + 9) on 20th October. Having confessed to grubby shoes in my luggage they received a thorough cleaning at customs - they hadn't been that clean since I got them! Perhaps inevitably my first Australian bird was house sparrow and, quite possibly, common myna was next!
Sunbird's Australia tour comes in 3 parts, of which I was doing the last. The leader and some of the participants were arriving from Darwin around 10:00 so I birded the area between the international terminal and domestic arrivals, quickly racking up lifers. In the context of what I was to see later I guess the best species seen were chestnut-breasted mannikin and fairy martin. The flight was a few minutes early and we took a taxi into Cairns to meet the rest of the group and pick up the minibus.
We visited the Esplanade but the tide was high so no waders and no sign of the long staying laughing gull (which we never did catch up with). However, who goes to Australia for laughing gull? Our first proper birding stop was at Centenary Lakes, where lifers came thick and fast. Notable species were a brown-backed honeyeater, young rufous night heron, Australian swiftlets and rainbow bee-eaters. We moved on to the cemetery and successully located a pair of bush stone-curlews with chick, along with scaly-breasted lorikeets. By now it was lunchtime, so we went back into Cairns to grab something to eat.
TBC
Rob
I left Edinburgh on a grey afternoon on Sunday 18th October and flew down to Heathrow. My onward flight to Singapore with British Airways left late evening. After a sleepless night, mitigated by excellent in-flight entertainment, we landed in Singapore around 5pm local time. After collecting my boarding pass for the onward flight to Cairns via Darwin, there was enough daylight to see if I could find some birds from the terminal building. I managed 4 species, but 2 were lifers: Javan (white-vented) myna and Pacific swallow, ... which was nice.
The flight to Cairns was with Jetstar, a Qantas codeshare partner. We were on the ground in Darwin for about 90 minutes in the middle of the night and reached Cairns shortly before 08:00 local time (BST + 9) on 20th October. Having confessed to grubby shoes in my luggage they received a thorough cleaning at customs - they hadn't been that clean since I got them! Perhaps inevitably my first Australian bird was house sparrow and, quite possibly, common myna was next!
Sunbird's Australia tour comes in 3 parts, of which I was doing the last. The leader and some of the participants were arriving from Darwin around 10:00 so I birded the area between the international terminal and domestic arrivals, quickly racking up lifers. In the context of what I was to see later I guess the best species seen were chestnut-breasted mannikin and fairy martin. The flight was a few minutes early and we took a taxi into Cairns to meet the rest of the group and pick up the minibus.
We visited the Esplanade but the tide was high so no waders and no sign of the long staying laughing gull (which we never did catch up with). However, who goes to Australia for laughing gull? Our first proper birding stop was at Centenary Lakes, where lifers came thick and fast. Notable species were a brown-backed honeyeater, young rufous night heron, Australian swiftlets and rainbow bee-eaters. We moved on to the cemetery and successully located a pair of bush stone-curlews with chick, along with scaly-breasted lorikeets. By now it was lunchtime, so we went back into Cairns to grab something to eat.
TBC
Rob