Gilmpse of Paradise

Northern Quoll trapping has been my life for the past month. The first quoll survey was up in the Kimberley at Paradise Station, with nine days of trapping, but no quolls recorded. The area is a little south of the Kimberley's Northern Quoll normal range and no rocky hills (that quolls like), so the result is not surprising.

We may not have seen any quolls, but we did record 90 species of birds, including five species not recorded on previous surveys.

Some of the scenery on Paradise is stunning, especially the many boab trees.

This ancient boab by the access road, we called the tree of faces.

It was cover in these weird ET type of faces.

Recent rains had turned the landscape green and filled many of the small lakes on the station.

Waterbirds seemed in low numbers on these lakes, maybe due to low food production here. This White-necked Heron thought it was a good place to look for frogs and fish.

One of our favourite quoll trapping sites at Snake Creek, nice and cool with lots of birds.

Quoll trapping involves lots of daily walking, as each Elliot or cage trap is at least 50 metres apart and there are usually 25 of these traps in a line at one site (then you must return the the car!). A survey such as this may have three or four sites.

Camera traps are also used, but this time only recorded a whole bunch of local birds coming to feed or drink.

One of the regulars caught in our quoll traps were these Northern Blue-tongues (Tiliqua scincoides).

He looks annoyed.

Evening is my favourite time of day, cool, with the daytime animals going to sleep and the night animals just waking up. We flushed a number of Chestnut-backed Button-quails here, which was a new Australian bird species for me.

A beautiful moon rise. This is one of our trapping sites for our next full fauna survey at Paradise in two weeks.

The Coots of Herdsman Lake

The autumn weather in Perth has been beautiful lately, with warm sunny days, blue skies and a smell of moisture in the air. The birding though had been a bit on the quiet side, with most of the waders gone and local birds silently going about their business.

I took a trip over to Herdsman Lake this week (after putting my XH A1 in at a repairer to hopefully get fixed), but again the birding was quiet over there. The main birds moving about and making noise were groups of coots, busily feeding on midges landing on some of the exposed mudflats.

Here's a video of such a group, enjoying the food and autumn sunshine.

Reptiles of Cue

The first birding trip to the Cue area this year was with my cousin, a few weeks before Easter . The weather had cooled down, but the autumn days were very warm (30+) and reptiles were still moving about. Here are some of the reptiles we recorded between Paynes Find and Cue (photos by Fred Coles).

Yellow-spotted Monitor (Varanus panoptes)

A beautiful big adult monitor

Lozenge-marked Dragon (Ctenophorus scutulatus). Mostly seen running along the ground in the mulga woodlands.

Is this a scutulatus?  Must be, but he was found hiding deep in a dead tree stump at Paynes Find.

And the colours were intense.

One of the common geckos in the area. A Gehyra variegata.

A wonderful Broad-banded Sand-swimmer (Eremiascincus richardsonii), found at Nallan Station.

Easter at Cue

Just back from another interesting birding trip to the Cue area in the Murchison region of Western Australia. Alas, no new bird species for me, but my wife did get 4 new lifers. A special tick for her was the Banded Whiteface, which was in it's usual arid haunt near Austin Downs station. We had arrived during the hot middle part of the day and were getting prepared to spend at least a couple hours looking for it over the barren stony plains, when suddenly two appeared less than 20 metres from the car! Excellent.

Our first night's camp at a Grey Honeyeater site near Paynes Find, but no Grey Honeyeaters were found. As you can see from the fly net, the bush flies were crazy out there!

Our typical camp setup. This one on Warne River near the Paynes Find - Sandstone road.

At Lake Austin we did find the Dunna-dunna, an unusual plant found growing at salt lakes only in this region.

A beautiful Pygmy Spiny-tailed Skink that came wandering into our campsite. A common lizard of these acacia woodlands, that uses it's spines to wedge itself in crevices against predators.

On our last night we had camped near Paynes Find again and were treated to lightening shows most of the night. Luckily most thunderstorms were to the north or south of our camp.

In the morning we woke, to find a massive storm bearing down directly on our camp!

We only just packed up in time and got out onto the main track, before a huge downpour flooded the whole area, turning the red soil into a boggy sticky mud.

The rain brought out wildlife, such as this female Red Kangaroo, to drink at roadside pools.

A wonderful trip, we did get over 70 species of birds, but still no Grey Honeyeater or Gilbert's Whistler! Looks like this area will need a springtime (September?) visit, maybe next year.

Eastern Reef Egret

Well, a couple big fauna surveys have been postponed, mainly due to flooding from an excessively wet rainy season up in the north of Western Australia. On the bright side, this means I can spend Easter with my wife and head out bush for some more birding and maybe video (with the HV40). It looks like Cue might be the destination again, with the country still in good condition from recent rains and quite a few arid zone birds that we need to get. I'm still on the hunt for that elusive Grey Honeyeater!

Here's a video of a easier bird to see, an Eastern Reef Egret, chasing small fish along a muddy creek. Fairly common on coastlines of Western Australia, but this video was taken at Cairns in north Queensland. These birds come in two morphs; this video is of the dark morph, which almost looks like a White-faced Heron.










There is also the white morph, which basically just looks like a small white egret.

White morph Eastern Reef Egret

Cue Birding

Unfortunately my Canon XH A1 is still broken after the birding trip to Cue. A shame as it broke on the first day, so I have nothing to show of that trip. Especially upsetting is the fact a Banded Whiteface, a new bird for me, came so close I could almost touch it, but alas no video!

Banded Whiteface

I did enjoy all the 83 species of birds we got, as the country around Cue has had the first good rains in about ten years and a lot of birds were moving about. Most of the salt lakes and salt pans still had lots of water in them (including the associated millions of flies and mosquitoes!). We dipped on Grey Honeyeater and Gilbert's Whistler, two difficult target birds to get in that region, but we did see a wonderful flock of over 45 Major Mitchell Cockatoos. A fantastic sight, as the beautiful salmon-pink and white cockatoos whirled  over the red sand dunes. I also now know of some good camping spots up that way and areas to visit.

I'm looking forward to another trip to the Cue area, but as it's about an 7 hour journey north of Perth, you really need an extra long weekend to enjoy it. Right now I'm getting ready for another journey northwards, this time back to the Camballin area in the south Kimberleys, for a big two week fauna survey.

Northern Pintail at Erskine Lakes

Today my wife and I travelled down to Erskine in Mandurah early in the morning to see the reported Northern Pintail there, a rare vagrant to southern Western Australia. Amazingly there was one here last year, could it be the same one? We missed out on seeing that one last year.

It didn't take long to find the pintail in the smaller of the 2 lakes at Erskine, a brownish female that looked different straight away from all the local ducks, well except maybe a pale Black Duck that had been fooling birders in the area. She was very flighty and would fly between the two lakes almost as soon as she saw you coming towards the water's edge! It was almost too easy for us to get this bird tick, which brings my Australian bird total to 544 (519 for Liz).

I did get this video, but I had to shoot it from long range with my small HV40, so the quality for that distance isn't that great, but it's still a record of it. I've just returned from Cue in the Murchison area where my big Canon XH A1 stopped working. I sure hope it can be fixed!