Brolga and three others

Sightings anywhere within a 250 km radius of Toowoomba, but excluding the local survey area (see above), for the period 1 Jun - 31 Aug 2010.

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Rod Hobson
Posts: 509
Joined: Thu Jan 19, 2006 8:03 am

Brolga and three others

Post by Rod Hobson »

Folks,

During a trip to Maryborough and back early this week I did some casual birding at some of my old haunts en route. I saw some great birds including four additional species for the "Winter Beyond - 2010" list. On the way out on Monday 12th. inst. I encountered a party of about six White-winged Choughs on the roadside just on the Kilkivan side of Goomeri. On my way home down the coast on Wednesday (14.07.2010) I recorded Horsfield's Bronze-Cuckoo in the mangroves at Donnybrook. On a farm dam along Pumicestone Road outside Toorbul I found a lone Brolga and at the Migratory Shorebird Roosting Site in Toorbul were three Marsh Sandpipers.

The shorebird roost in Toorbul was very productive on the day, as, in addition to the Marsh Sanpipers, I saw three Grey-tailed Tattlers, four Red-capped Plovers, a dozen Eastern Curlews, about 15 Bar-tailed Godwits, eight Pied Oystercatchers, six Gull-billed Terns, five Caspian Terns and several Black-winged Stilts. At this same site were 37 industrious little Red-necked Stints feeding across the mudflat. One was a pretty individual in full breeding colours. In the mangroves at Donnybrook I had good views of a single dark morph White-bellied Cuckoo-shrike. The landward verges of the mangroves here were alive with butterflies including many Evening Browns (Melanitis leda), White-banded Planes (Phaedyma shepherdi), Scarlet Jezebels (Delias argenthona) and Common Crows (Euploea core).

Scarlet Honeyeaters were very common throughout the sites that I birded over the three days. In Maryborough, in the bushland abutting the Military Range Boundary in Walker Street, this honeyeater was abundant feeding on the blossoms of Eucalyptus tereticornis. It was very common in the melaleucas and mangroves around Donnybrook and Toorbul as well. (It was also in numbers in Redwood Park yesterday afternoon).

Not a bad three days at all; beats sitting in the office big time.

Regards,
Rod Hobson
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