Bundaberg

Isnt fruit picking fun, been in bundaberg (or 'Bundy' as us in the in-crowd call it) for a week now and its driving me mad already, it really is a dump as people had warned me it was. have done all sorts of odd jobs like planting sweet potatoes, stacking sugar cane bales and tearing down old tomato plants. thanks to the decrepit, untidy condition of the farms the birding has been quite good whilst working with the tomatofarm producing my first singing bushlark, chestnut breasted manakin and tawny grassbird, and a quail sp. running in front of the tractor that i didnt see well enough to i.d. other new birds seen arounf bundy include channel billed cuckoo (2 over the sweet potato farm), little shrike thrus, pale headed rosella, mangrove honeyeater and spice finch, bringing my aus list to 306, and the trip list to 412.
apologies for posts being very boring and few and far between but i havnt really done much interesting lately, hopefully when i leave here in a few weeks time and the australian summer starts to kick in things will liven up a bit.
p.s. marbled duck, genuine? sod off, its got no chance! (unless it stays there until january, then i can see it and pronounce it a definate vagrant)

Heading North

In brisbane at the moment on a 2 day stopover on the way up to bundaberg to another spell of fruit picking, what fun. o nthe way here from sydney i stopped at byron bay for a week. didnt get round to doing that much birding but still saw a few new birds including scaly breasted lorikeet, far eastern curlew and the somewhat bizzare sight of an australian brush turkey that thought it was a feral pigeon eating cigarette butts in the car park! it was also good to see birds that i hadnt seen since darwin like figbirds and rainbow bee eaters. the main highlights however came from the sea, with great views of humpbacck whale, and green turtles from the clifftop at byron lighthouse. also a superb experience that came pretty close to snorkelling with the manta rays in fiji: while i was swimming and having fun in the surf on the main beach at byron i felt something brush my leg, looking down i was slightly surprised to see a shoal of small fish swimming around my legs, then seconds later a common dolphin streaked past no less than a metre away and then circles me several times as the fish it was hunting took refuge around me, awsome stuff!

Very old pics from mildura

A few common birds from alongside the murray River

Purple Swamphen
















Australian Darter
















Maned Duck

More wollongong pelagic pix

Indic Yellow Nosed Albatross



















Brown Skua
















Wedge tailed Shearwater

















Humpback whale

Old pics from Royal National Park (near Sydney)

Thanks to the very rare event of having some spare time to kill and decent internet access spontaneously, heres a load of old pics:

Short beaked echidna, a bit like a hedgehog but sharper
















Cracking views down the coast and over a whale infested sea
















Pondering the best way to cross the Hacking River













Tawny Crowned Honeyeater

















Variegated Fairy Wren, right little crackers

Fiji birds

Fiji Woodswallow




















Whistling Dove




















Silktail




















Orange Dove, a shit picture that really
does not do justice to a truly superb bird













Black naped tern















Collared Lory




















Blue crested broadbill

Photos from last months wollongong pelagic

A bloody massive humpback whale and a
few barnacles
















Northern Giant Petrel


















Wedge tailed shearwater















Pete milburn ready to net an albatross

fiji pictures

Some pics from the yasawas
















some new fijian mates




















Crazy fire eating stuff


















Drinking Kava out of a coconut shell

Fiji

am back in sydney now after a superb two weeks in fiji.

i started off with 4 days in the Yasawa group, a small island chain off the west coast of fijis main island viti levu. as the yasawas are pretty poor for birding i decided to hang up the bins and be a regular tourist instead. time was spent, sunbathing, snorkelling or getting wasted, occasionally with combinations of the three. The snorkelling was far and away the highlight with some superb coral reefs offshore islands that were teeming with some unbelievably brightly coloured fish, starfish and and i had a breif view of a seasnake. this was pretty boring stuff though compared to snorkelling with a masssive manta ray in the deep channel off the south end of naviti island. swimming alongside this huge beast was just awesome. having heard of the tragic death of the legend that was steve irwin i took all the safety precautions anbd wore lots of suncream cos it said on the bottle "protects from harmful rays"
also spent a lot of time sampling kava, the local drink that is made from mixing water with the pounded up dried roots of ssoem wierd plant. it looks and tastes like muddy water thats been strained through dirty socks but has a rather fun tranquilising effect, and it doesnt cause a hangover effect! unfortunately i dont think the plant woudl be able to grow in english conditions.

after the third day i was getting a bit tetchy about the lack of birds (running up and down the beach pulling my hair out and screaming to get me off this godforsaken avian desert island). luckily the boat back to the main island of viti levu produced some cracking seabirds, with red tailed tropicbird, brown booby, lesser frigatebird, audobons shearwater, sooty and bridled tern all being seewn well but briefly thanks to the boat being too fast.

i then headed over to the east side of the island to stay in the colo-i-suva forest park. thsi was more like it, soem decent patches of rainforest that had escaped logging produced some great fijian endemics, Golden dove, blue crested braodbill, masked shinging parrot, giant forest honeyeater and peales imperial pigeon being the highlights.

after that i took a very small plane over to the island of taveuni, much less popualr with tourists and with soem very rugged hills, which meant that it still retained much of its forest. a hike up to des vouex peak (1192 metres) in 30degree plus heat and starting from sea level was very tiring but produced the three taveuni endemics, orange dove, red shining parrot and silktail, all superb birds, as well as many coloured fruit dove and good views of the endemics seen on viti levu which were much more abundant. a snorkelling trip to korolevu island produced red footed booby and blaack naped tern.

i then flew in an even smaller plane to kadavu island, south of viti levu, and after an hour long speedboat transfer arrived at the far eastern end of the island that was almost completely untouched apart from a few small beachside resorts. the four kadavu endemics were all seen well in the two days, kadavu fantail, kadavu honeyeater, kadavu shining parrot and whistling dove.

when i have the time i will write a full birding trip report cos there dosent seem to be that many for fiji, anjd hopefully i'll post some pics if blogger stops being gay and lets me.

wollongong

Wollongong, what a great name for a town eh, enough to make anyone from somewhere named as dully as Frome consider topping themselves.
Have had a Rather busy weekend, starting on saturday by taking te ferry from cronulla across to bundeena in the north east corner of the royal national park and walking across the NP to heathcote station, gettign badly lost in the rainforest thanks to a walking trail that looked like a wallaby track and vice versa, and a river with no obvious crossing point, still, i made it to heathcote in time for a train to wollongong. after arriving in wollongong i headed into town to do some shopping and somehow ended up inside the st.george illawarra dragons stadium watching their rugby league game against the cronulla sharks, unfortunately it properly pissed it down for most of the game, so it was quite a scrappy game in difficult conditions, but several cracking fights were very entertainig, one of whic resulted in the sin-binning of three players. great stuff
then today (sunday0 i had my second pelagic off wollongong. it was very similar to my last trip with only 2 new species, wedge tailed and huttons shearwaters but with 8 species of albatross and several solnaders petrels. also had awesoem views of humpback whales breaching alongisde the boat plus bottlenose and common dolphins.

Royal national Park

spent the day exploring the moors area in the north east of the Royal National Park, south of sydney. highlights were two of the three target birds for the area, southern emu-wren and tawny crowned honeyeater, though the lack of chestnut rumped hylacola was annoying. the emu-wrens were much harder to see than the mallee emu wrens at hattah thanks to the much denser vegetation, also a pant soilingly close encounter with a big off snake affected my fieldcraft somewhat (jumping several feet into the air and squealing like a girl), unsurprisingly the emu-wrens were not impressed with my stalking skills and had long since buggered off by the time i regained my composure.
The coastline of the national park is truly stunning with views from sydney down to wollongong. the sanbdstone cliffs had all sorts wierd patterns eroded into them and a group of humpback whales breaching spectaculalrly (albeit distantly) offshore just topped off the views nicely.
unfortunately the weather turned sour this afternoon, tipping down with rain and the wind really got up quite strong, hopefully it will turn nicer for my pelagic on sunday.

more pics

White winged chough- which together with the apostlebird a few posts ago
makes up the entire corcoracidae family, one of only 5 bird
families endemic to australia (or somethin along those lines)















Redthroat















Misteltoebird















Sturts Desert Pea

















Redback spider on a pumpkin i was trying to pick

















Brown treecreeper



















Working on the vineyard

a few more pix from broken hill and hattah

Regent Parrot

















Mulga Parrot

















Spotted Nightjar

Red rumped parrot

hattah kulkyne NP

mallee ringneck














grey backed butcherbird














apostlebird

i'm now back from my camping trip to hattah kulkyne NP, a massive patch of mallee scrub and lakes and stuff between mildura and melbourne. avian highlights were excellent views of mallee emu-wren and regent parrot and typically brief (i.e. shit) views of striated grasswren. other new birds were splendid fairy wren, gilberts whistler, crested bellbird, striped and yellow tufted honeyeaters. other more dubious highlights were being chased by a very stroppy emu with several cool stripey chicks, and turning the tables by chasing a kangaroo (dont ask why) and causing it to jump over a 7ft roo fence. camping was much less than comfortable in freezing overnight temperatures in a sleeping bag rated to +10degrees and on hard ground without a rollmat. that'll learn me not to travel light again.

apologies for really shit pics, the net cafe has no editing software at all, i cant even crop the pics!! and they have the cheek to call australia a civilised modern country, pah!
the fact that blogger doesnt seem t oallow me to post pics of rare birds (orange chat, mulga parrot, redthroat, regent parrot) doesnt help either.

broken hill

i'm now back from my a short trip to broken hill. it really is the arse end of beyond, 300km from any other settlement. the town itself was a bit of a dump with horrific scars from its mining heritage which created the wealth to build the town, one huge open cast mine splits the place in two. apparently the "line of lode" the metal seam that runs through it is the richest in the world for zinc, silver and another one that i cant remember.
as for the birds, i really had no idea where to look, i just knew that there were loads of rare desert goodies "within 150km of Broken Hill", that would be fun without a car. i decided that the best bet would be to hire a bike and try heading as far out of the town as i could physically manage. On the first day i rode 20km north east on the silver city highway to Stephens Creek, a river that had long dried up. this area was very productive with mulga parrot, redthroat, chestnut crowned babbler and pink cockatoo. cycling slowly back to town produced loads of chirruping wedgebill and several orange chat, really smart birds. also new for me were australasian pipit and brown songlark. riding back was really tough, the wind had picked up while i was birding stephens creek and i was heading straight back into it, along with several small sandstorms.
The next day (today) i couldnt go so far as i had a bus back to mildura (where i'm writing this from) in the early afternoon. i headed out towards the "living desert'" sculpture symposiom, 12km north west of broken hill. roughly halfway there i stopped at a site that i thought looked promising and was rewarded with a superb male crimson chat, rufous songlark, shy hylacola (heathwren) and a spotted nightjar roosting on the ground.
overall not a bad few days considering i had no real gen.
am catching the bus down to hattah kulkyne NP in a few hours to camp for a 3 nights and to try and see some of the rarer mallee specialists. unfortunately the bus doesnt arrive at hattah til 10:45pm and then its 5 km to the campsite, not sure what i'll do but i hope to work something out pretty soon, my first bit of "going bush" required methinks.

leaving mildura

apologies for not updating this for ages, havnt really had much to update it with.
i've mqanaged only one days birding since the last update, on sunday i looked around ranfurly lakes. the highlight was a large hirundine flock which contained my first fairy martins and a cracking trio of white backed swallows.
tommorrow morning i'm off to broken hill, in the new south wales outback for a few days, then down camping at hattah kulkyne NP, then back to the east coast for a wollongong pelagic and then its off to fiji for two weeks, its a hard life eh!

Vineyard work

i have started new work in a vineyard now, pruning the vines, which is quite easy work but obviously a little boring.
we get picked up at 6:30am which is bit naff when you work hard all day and drink hard all night, its pretty impressive to see the sun rising over the frosty outback on the daily commute though. the vineyard really is in the middle of nowhere, its an hours drive from mildura. plenty of wildlife around the site, have seen plenty of kangaroos and emus on the way to work. yesterday on the way back from the work, a lad from manchester who was riding his motorbike back had a full on collission with an emu that ran out in front of him, he was very lucky to get away with only a coupe, of ratehr savage grazes to his knees, the emu was not so lucky and was scrambling around on the side of the road, luckily a local farmer was driving behind our bus and had a rifle handy to finish it off, though his .243 was hardly the ideal weapon for such a dispatch.

i have mangaged to pick up my forst injury from native wildlife. some obnoxious little bastard of a mosquito has bitten me on the left elbow causing it to swell up to the size of a small zepplin, its impeding ym work slightly but hopefully will go down soon enough.

i've managed to get out doing a bit of birding around mildura in the evenings after work. Lake ranfurly has been the most productive site with white winged fairy wren, bluebonnet parrots, zebra finches, masses of caspian terns and plenty of ducks and waders.
other sites nearby have produced red capped and hooded robin, southern whiteface, apostlebird and brown treecreeper.

also apologies for all the shitty spam comments being left, i have now had to enable comment moderation to stop this. Does anyone know if is possible to delete existing commenst?

Pumpkin Picking, Exciting stuff

have spent the last few days picking pumpkins just over the border into New South Wales fro mMildura, now that may seem like a very dull job, most of the time it was, but the presence of Red backed spiders hiding underneath quite a few of the pumpkins was rather alarming, these spiders can kill a human quite easily with a single bite, not so boring after all
also managed to see Malle Ringneck ( a parrot) in the vineyards adjacent to the pumpkin fields whilst working, which took the trip list to 300, not bad for a month of not very intensive birding.

Mildura birding

finally got out to do some proper birding around mildura this arvo (as they say over here). knocked oof wrok early and spent some time looking around the murray river. flame robin, weebill, yellow billed spoonbill, diamond dove, white browed babbler, australian shoveller, hoary headed grebe, caspian tern and the star, a cracking crested shrike tit were all new birds for me.

Random fact of the day:

Some people may be able to rememebr some really naff adverts on talksport radio durin genglands last cricket tour of england for a place called Sunraysia, i think one of them went something like this, read by someone with a really camp austrlian voice

so if your coming ot australia, visit Sunraysia for a while,
and try our l0vely prune juice, its sure to make you smile (or give you the shits for 3 days)

well, Sunraysia is the district i'm in now, if you can remeber the advetrs that would be quite funny but if you never heard them you probably think i'm utterly bonkers, (if you didnt already that is)

joe

Theres an Englishman, a german, a finn and and irishman

No, not the start of a really shit joke i stole off the internet, but the mix we have at the hostel i'm staying at. All a good bunch but communication is obviously quite difficult. The german, the finn and the irishman all speak very good english and talk alot, my lack of any grasp of the language leaves me feeeling quite left out. The irishman is from limerick

There once was a young man from limerick
who was a bit of a prick
he spoke utter tripe
smoked hash through a pipe
and was really rather thick


see what i did there, he's from limerick, and i made a limerick about him, clever eh! sorry
i'm now in the rather isolated town of mildura, just in the state of victoria on the edge of the murray river. Started some vineyard work today, it was the slightly odd job of cutting off sticks from the vines to be planted and earning 7cents per stick, on to hourly pay tomorrow so should be better. not had time for any birding so far, but managed to see dusky woodswallow, spiny cheeked honeyeater, black shouldered kite and yellow rosella whilst working, which probably didnt help my 'sticks per hour' rate.
Mildura is a bit of a strange place, without wanting to slag it off too much after being here for only a day, it seems like one of those places where everybody knows everbody, nobody trusts anybody and "have i met you before, maybe at a family reunoin" is likely to be the best chat up line in a club.
hopefully i'll be getting down to Hattah Kuklkyne NP soon for some of the mallee specialities
joe