Friday, October 27, 2006

Lamington National Park

i'm back in brisbane now after spending the last few days camping in Lamington National Park, near the famous O' reilllys guesthouse. at over 700m above sea level it was far and away the highest i've ever camped, but it was a truly excellent site with a tent list including 2 bowerbird species, wonga pigeon, and several nocturnal mammals, including apossum that kepy trying to get into my tent at night to nick my food.
The birding was also great with 16 lifers. Star bird was Rufous Scrub bird, one of the hardest of australias resident birds to see, thanks to its skulking habits and the fact that it can only be found in the cool, damp Antarctic Beech nothofagus moorei forests above 1000m above sea level, that were an 18km trek from the nearest road. other great birds seen were noisy pitta, alberts lyrebird ,topknot pigeon, paradise riflebird,logrunner, australain owlet nightjar, black faced monarch and red browed treecreeper.

also, i've managed to get to a computer that allows me to upload photos, so theres plenty of new ones fro mrecent trips.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi Joe,
I'm off birding to Lamington this weekend and wondered if you could give me the specifics of where you saw Rufous Scrub-bird. Tom Tarrant said "He told me the water-point on the Tooloona Walk, unfortunately I'm not sure where this is but he could mean the water-point on the Border Track which is probably the closest stake-out to the Guest-House.
Approx 3-4 kms from O'Reillys. I have seen one there in the past but usually continue on to Bithongabel and Tooloona Lookout. (Also look out for Olive Whistler and Rufous Bettong)"
You could drop me a line at BritishBirder (at) gmail.com if you wouldn't mind.
Cheers mate
Graham Etherington