Weekend birding – Border Ranges National Park 15 – 160809
The target – Eastern Bristlebird.
The plan – head for the hills and hope for the best!
The journey – drive 2 hours SW of Brisbane to the border crossing on the Lion’s road, south of Rathdowney, up and over the range and down to Sheep Station Creek Rd campsite ($7 per vehicle to day visit, $5 per adult to camp per night – a bit of a rip if you ask me, maybe we shd have parked outside and walked into the camp ground)
The campsite – good, except we had no firewood, made me think we shd have paid only $3 each. Yeah, I’m tight, but fair is fair!
The birds: we stopped first just after the border crossing at a likely looking spot on the road – lots of grass cover under the trees on a very steep slope – but no sign of the Bristlebirds. Not totally unexpected, of course, if they were that easy everyone would have seen them, but as we said, you never know! We did have a Grey Goshawk pass through the valley, which is always worthwhile.
On to the camp ground and stopping here and there for any birds we saw – and one snake we nearly ran over but managed to avoid – it disappeared quickly into the cover, but as it was a large green and yellow snake, I’m pretty sure it was a tree snake.
At the campsite we erected tents and I, having been voted Kitchen Bitch, brewed up coffee, while the other two birded the site. Eastern Yellow Robins, White-throated Treecreepers, Golden Whistler, Yellow-faced and Lewin’s Honeyeaters, Brown Cuckoo-dove, King Parrots, Brown Gerygone, Grey Shrike Thrush, Eastern Whipbird, Grey Fantails, Pied Currawong – in short all the birds you’d expect to see in a wet-sclerophyll-verging-on-rainforest setting. S also reported a Russet-tailed Thrush and we all managed to see it later. After coffee we decided to drive on up the road to higher ground for a look see. We found a second campsite further up – and decided next time we would stay there. Then on up to a lookout beside an patch of Antarctic Beech. Eastern Spinebill showed here and we tried for Olive Whistler without luck. Very quiet in fact, though a lovely location and, although camping is not encouraged here it would be a lovely site.
We returned to our camp and I began preparing dinner, while, again, the others birded. We had easy prepared meals and boiled potatoes so it wasn’t hard, however, we ran out of gas just as the meal was ready so I was not the most popular of people even with myself….
After dinner and a couple of glasses of wine, we headed down the track to the creek itself, headlamps and torches to hand. Along the river bank glow worms showed in their homes in the bank – pretty cool actually! We couldn’t hear much over the noise of the river so headed back up. Near the top the distinct call of a Sooty Owl and we had views of two birds high in the canopy peering down at us. Out on the road for an hour or so and we heard Masked Owl and a distant Marbled Frogmouth. In roadside trees we had at least 1 Greater Glider, a probable Koala and a very dark Brush-tailed Possum, we believe was a Short-eared Possum, a recent split from the Mountain Bobuck.
Back to camp again and we are all knackered for some reason so we crashed fairly quickly and relatively early.
Up at daybreak to a warm, sunny morning. I had forgotten the frying pan and with that and running out of gas – a fire was required. Bacon (slightly burnt) and poached eggs on over toasted turkish bread made a satisfactory breakfast and then it was down the creek track again. We walked a fair way along the track seeing the usual semi-rainforest species as yesterday but adding Fan-tailed and Shining Bronze cuckoos – heard only, Pale Yellow Robin, Albert’s Lyrebird (heard only), Yellow-throated Scrub-wren and several pairs of Logrunners. We returned to camp around 11 and headed back north stopping at a couple of spots to try again for our original target bird, without success.
Arrived home about 2.
