Lamingotn NP pics

Theiving gypsy possum bastard

















Male Regent bowerbird, what a stunner
















Lewins Honeyeater
















Female satin bowerbird


















Male satin bowerbird

Southport Pelagic Pics

THE BOY!! Tahiti Petrel


















Wedge tailed shearwater














Crested Tern















Fleshy footed shearwater



















Tahiti Petrel

indy pics

Miss Indy swimwear competition















Porsche Carrera (its much harder to take a pic like this than it seems)



















Taken shortly before being removed by security














With two of the miss indy finalists at the vollevball competition

Gold Coast- Spiffingly good!

after leaving rainbow beach i headed down to brisbane where i did naff all for two days.
then i went down to surfers paradise, in the Gold Cost for the Indy 300 race, which seems to be the bigest event on in austrlia at the moment, the place was absolutely heaving. i only had time to visit the first day which was mainly practice and qualifying, but a porsche carrera race at the end of the day was exciting stuff to watch, and so loud it was unbelievable, the off-track entertainment was also pretty damn good (pics to folow!). then i nipped a short way up the coast to southport where i am at the moment, staying in "trekkers" the best hostel i've been in in aus so far. Today was one of the most anticipated days of the trip, a pelagic.
The trip did not start well for me, i soon realised that 3 hours of sleep, a belly full of chep beer and a lack of food (thanks to the hostel kitchen being locked when i left at 4:30am) was not a recipe for a stable stomach when combined with a bit of a chop on the sea. luckily, the sea flattenned off fairly quick and the birds started to show, the steam out to the continental shelf was interrupted by a "wandering" albatross, probably gibsonii, several Wilsons Storm Petrels and my first fleshy footed shearwater. Soon after stopping and hoying out a load of shark liver (white pointer, the best stuff apparently) the prize bird appeared, a Tahiti Petrel, a cracking black (or very dark brown) pterodroma style petrel ,that flew very languidly, like a small albatross, an awesome bird. For the rest of the trip there was constantly something to look at, a small flock of Common Noddies were my first of this species, and by the end of the trip we had counted 11 Tahitis, 31 wilsons petrels and far to many wedge tailed shears to bother counting. a nice sighting of a humpback whale was had on the way back to port, and we were welcomed back to the harbour by a low flying F-111 jet burning off its fuel spectacularly over the nearby indy race, nicely topping off a wonderful few days.

More Inskip photos

Lace Monitor (Goanna)















4X4ing
















Mangrove Honeyeater



















Butterfly sp.
















Rufous Whistler
















Varied triller















Sunset



















Red capped Plover

Inskipp

black breasted buttonquail in the gloom















sunset over fraser island from the campsite

















Baby bush turkey that almost found its way into the wok
















Beach stone curlew

i'm back in rainbow beach noe after a cracking weekend at inskipp point. as there are no buses between rainbow and the campsite at inskipp i decided to walk the 15km and try and hitch a lift on the way. luckily i was picked up after a few km (very handy as i was carrying rather a lot as all drinking water had to be carried in as there was no facilities on site) by a couple of ozzie blokes who were spending the weekend fishing at the point. they seemed alright so i pent the weekend with them in exchange for keeping the fire lit. The two target birds for the trip were picked up within half an hour of arriving with a pair of beach stone curlew a few hundred metres north of the campsite, and black breasted buttonquail were easily found feeding in the leaf litterbetween the cmapsite and the point. other new birds seen were red capped plover, red necked stint, grey tailed tattler and white cheeked honeyeater.
On saturday we went for drive in the guys 4X4 up to the rahter inappropriately named freshwater lake (its been empty for years apparently) and along the beach, great fun. spent the rest of the day fishing off the point which was livened up the prescence of a brown snake that swum across the strait fro mfraser island!
as i was in the area i thought it would be rude not to visit fraser as it is one of the main tourist spots of the area so i blagged a free trip on a barge over for a quick walk around this morning.
i'm expecting to feel a little sore tomorrow morning after spending the afternoon hurling myself down the sand dunes back here in rainbow beach, great fun!

Rainbow beach

had an excellent days birding today. in the morning and in heavy rain ("sunshine coast" my arse) i headed out of rainbow beach to bymein picnic area along the telegraph track and saw 7 lifers, brown cuckoo dove, wompoo fruit dove ,rose crowned fruit dove, green catbird, spectacled monarch, white eared monarch and pale yellow robin, with a decent supporting cast of eastern whipbird, emerald dove ,golden whistler and rufous fantail.
will be spending th enext few days camping out on inskip point, 10km north of rainbow beach looking for the rare black breasted buttonquail and beach stone curlew ,then try back inland from rainbow beach for ground parrot on the cooloola heathland.

Enough of that Shite

arrived in rainbow beach having escaped bundaberg early this morning. hopefully i've now done enough work to see me through til the end of the trip, unless i do something silly like buy a new camera, charter a plane to some obscure place to see some obscure bird, or go on a mega week long bender in brisbane, or possibly all three ,sounds rather fun.
anyhoo, last weekend in bundy was alright, on saturday went on a trip to 'snakes down under' in Childers to see a steve irwin wanabee playing with the worlds 5 most venomous snakes, then got to handle a carpet python and a baby saltwater croc, spent the sunday recovering from a hangover on the beach (note to self: never drink vodka with estonians again). there was seven estonians staying at the hostel which i'm sure must be at least two thirds of estonias population, their economy must be properly up shit creek at the moment!!

managed a short bush walk around rainbow beach this afternoon which was quite productive with scarelt honeyeater, little bronze cuckoo and large billed scrubwren being new birds for me.

(bitter)Sweet potatos

after pissing around doing shiity jobs for a few days here and there i'm 'settled' into a job on a sweet potato farm at the moment, picking them, packing them, and planting new ones all day. been doing it for a week and a haof now but finish on wednesday, which couldnt come a day too soon. the farm has some good birding, there are several pairs of banded lapwing and a loads of maskd lapwing. the overgrown rows which we are harvesting are swarming with singing golden headed cisitcolas and there are figbirds, rainbow bee-eaters and other good stuff around the edge of the farm.
life at the hostel has got a bit 'interesting'. theres a japanese girl in the same room who gets upfor work in a packing shed at 4:00am (i'm on one of the better shifts, work starts at 6am!), when her alarm went off this morning, she didnt wake up, and i couldnt turn the alarm off cos all the writing on it was in some wierd symbols (japanese probably), in my half asleep state the only logical way to shut the dammed thing up was to hoy it out of the open window, unfortunately i forgot that we were on the third floor. i returned home from work today to be greeted by the very iratre japanese girl, holding a savagely wounded alarm clock and screaming something about being sacked for not turning up the work, oops.

i've just realised, i've written an entire post, purely about sweet potatos, surely thats a first for blogger, who even eats the things anyway, whats wrong with normal spuds!

also, i've managed to get tickets for the 3rd and 4th days of the boxing day ashes test in melbourne so i'm feeling very smug.

baldwin swamp

maybe bundaberg isnt so bad after all. i went out yesterday to look around the town and found a rather nice little reserve called baldwin swamp, even though it was more of a collection of ornamental ponds than a swamp it still has a decent 'birdy' feel to it. had two new birds for the trip there in cotton pygmy goose and white throated warbler, along with my first australian dollarbird and some other birds i hadnt seen since darwin like azure kingfisher, magpie goose and leaden flycatcher.

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.