The Atherton Tablelands
It was an early start today. There was (supposed to be) a bird-count happening at 7am at Hastie’s Swamp just outside Atherton, which is in the tablelands just west of Cairns. This was the main reason Drew had been going up there. He picked me up at the hostel at 5.15am and we set off.
I had been to Hastie’s Swamp before, when I was last in Cairns (two decades ago now!). Then I had walked from Atherton – it’s only about 5km along the main road out of town – which is what I had been going to do this time as well until meeting Drew.
The GPS in Drew’s car sent us in a silly route but we got to the wetland eventually. There was nobody else there. So much for the bird-count! No matter, we had the hide to ourselves.
Although called a “swamp” it is really a small open lake or lagoon edged with reeds and forest. Two decades ago this was the place to come to see Brolgas. They roosted in the reeds and in the early morning they would be calling and dancing in the fog, and then lift up
en masse, sometimes hundreds of them, and fly off to their feeding grounds in the farmland. This was the first place I ever saw Brolgas (and it was on my birthday too!), and two days later I saw my first Sarus Cranes in fields near Yungaburra which is a small town to the east of Atherton.
Now the Brolgas seem to have largely disappeared from here. I just tried to dig up some stats on the numbers of cranes at the site so I could see for myself, but couldn’t really find anything useful showing changes in the population over time – however, what I was told was that while there are
some cranes the big numbers are long gone, and same for the roosting areas of the Sarus Cranes.
It is likely connected with changing farming practices on the Tablelands. Corn and peanuts used to be the main crops on the Tablelands, and the cranes fed on the leftovers in the fields. Now a lot of those have been replaced with fields of sugarcane which the cranes can’t use. Apparently sugarcane was never a big crop up here because the season wasn’t long enough before the rains came (it couldn’t be harvested in time), but now the dry season lasts longer so the cane can be grown better and harvested later.
Absent the Brolgas, we still saw 27 species from the hide including Red-browed Finches (which are very common birds down the east coast, but the first ones I’ve seen on this trip).
The birds were mostly all common species, with lots of ducks (all Black Ducks and Grey Teal, other than a couple of Wandering Whistling Ducks and some White-eyed Ducks) and various wadery things like Purple Swamphens, Dusky Moorhens, Great and Little Egrets, Royal Spoonbills, Pied Stilts and Comb-crested Jacanas. I saw a Banded Rail briefly on the far shore as well. The light wasn’t very good but I managed some photos of the closer birds.
These are Comb-crested Jacanas
With nothing very interesting here we hopped back in the car and set off for Mt Hypipamee, which is a higher altitude forest known in particular (amongst birders) for Golden Bowerbird. This site is not very far from Atherton but you need a car to get there because “not very far” is still too far for walking. From Atherton it is 25km by road, and from Yungaburra it is 29km. This would almost certainly be my only chance to get here.
There were lots of birds right at the parking area. Victoria’s Riflebird, Yellow-throated Scrubwren, Spectacled Monarch, and Pale-Yellow and Grey-headed Robins were all seen right here, and there was a cacophony of unseen birds in the trees all around.
Pale-Yellow Robin
From the parking area there is a short trail which leads to a viewing platform above the Hypipamee crater (which looks more like a water-filled sinkhole), and then there is a longer loop trail back to the car park. Drew said that in his experience the most birds are seen just on the trail to the crater, and not much on the other trail.
Just as we started along this trail we met two American birders coming out and stopped to exchange information, as good birders tend to do. They had seen a Blue-faced Parrotfinch earlier in the morning, in the grasses along the trail by the viewing platform. This was good news for Drew because this was the bird he was actually looking for, and even better news for me because Blue-faced Parrotfinches are generally found in more distant places which I wouldn’t be able to reach. Whether it would still be around was another matter.
Continuing on our way, I spotted a treecreeper creeping its way up a tree. There are two species recorded here, the White-throated Treecreeper and the Brown Treecreeper. We got good views of it but were confused as to what it was. It clearly wasn’t a White-throated Treecreeper but it was way too dark to be a Brown Treecreeper, and in any case the field guide said that species was found in dry forest. Then Drew dragged forth a distant memory that the subspecies of Brown Treecreeper found in the Far North (
melanotus) is a very distinctive dark form which lives in wet forest and bears the common name of Black Treecreeper (not to be confused with the Black-tailed Treecreeper which is a totally different treecreeper again). So this was a lifer for me – although I’m still going to have to try and find the more regular Brown Treecreeper further south just in case they split
melanotus as a full species in the future!
At the viewing platform we saw the grassy area where the parrotfinch had been seen. It was just a short stretch of grass, maybe twenty or thirty metres along the side of the trail before the trees got too thick and the grass disappeared. We walked very slowly up and down here a few times. Maybe the finch was down in the grass, maybe it had gone further down the slope out of sight – maybe it had left entirely.
After a bit we took a position at each end of this section of track so we could watch for any movement over a wider area. We probably spent close to an hour here – Drew really wanted this bird! In the meantime I saw a male Golden Whistler, a Shining Bronze Cuckoo, a Grey Fantail, a male Mistletoebird, and a White-throated Treecreeper of which I got a photo. It’s not a very good shot – the bird was moving constantly and it was quite dark under the trees – but look at those huge talons!
White-throated Treecreeper
In the end we decided to move on, as the parrotfinch clearly had also done. Some you win and some you lose.
When you’re giving up on a bird you always feel like maybe it will just suddenly appear as you’re leaving. I glanced down from the steps leading onto the viewing platform. Oh, there was the parrotfinch!!
This was my fifth species of parrotfinch and Drew’s first one. It was remarkably relaxed, just feeding amongst the grasses unobtrusively. Basically the kind of bird which it would be very easy to walk right past if you weren’t actively looking for it. I tried for some photos but I didn’t think any of them would turn out, so gave up on that and just watched it through my binoculars. I was surprised that some of the shots weren’t that bad. They’re not great, but with some cropping and sharpening of the image the one above is “okay” at least. It’s always nice to have some proof as well!
Back at the parking area we walked along the entrance road for a little distance in the hope of seeing a Cassowary. It was pretty hot and while there was still quite a bit of bird-song coming down from the treetops there weren’t many birds being visible.
As we walked back to the car Drew was saying to keep an eye out for any narrow foot-tracks leading off the road because they would probably be leading to Golden Bowerbird bowers. As he was saying this, I saw a track. In we went, and quickly found an old bower and then a second one. I presumed there must be a male still living around the area somewhere. I’d like to say that as we left he came out and we saw him, but unfortunately that did not happen. He
was still here though, because two days later I met a birder in Atherton who had just seen him that day on that track.
We returned to Atherton for lunch, buying some pies at the Atherton Bakehouse which I highly recommend – although today was a Friday and, as I found out when staying in Atherton for the next three nights, it is closed on weekends!
We were going to eat our pies at Platypus Park on the edge of Atherton, but accidentally drove right past it (the sign is not obvious) and instead just went back to the hide at Hastie’s Swamp.
There were a number of new birds for the day’s list here, including a huge flock of Magpie Geese which weren’t here in the morning, some pelicans, an Eastern Yellow Robin (nesting near the hide), and several birds of prey – Black Kites, Whistling Kites, a White-bellied Sea Eagle, and a Nankeen Kestrel. A lady in the hide showed us Nankeen Night Herons roosting in a nearby tree. The American couple from Mt Hypipamee (the ones who had let us know about the Blue-faced Parrotfinch) also turned up and I pointed out the White-eyed Ducks which they had been looking for.
The last place we went today was a lake outside Mareeba, which is a town just north of Atherton. On Google it’s called Quaids Dam. Drew had said that between 50 and 150 Green Pigmy Geese had been reported here, and was talking about how a wetland area on the south side of the lake right next to the road was always full of pigmy geese and other water birds whenever he went there in the past. I couldn’t help but think that he probably hadn’t been there at this time of year but didn’t say anything. When we got to that place it was, as I had suspected would be the case, dry land and there were no birds.
Further up the road at a small memorial marker where the lake was viewable, there was a very wide expanse of dry mud before the current lake shore, and there was a fence as well. Clouds of dust were sweeping across the mudflat, even spinning in circles in mini tornadoes. Drew got his scope out of the car. Some of the larger birds could be identified – Black-necked Stork, Black Swans and Brolgas - but with the heat haze and distance everything else were just fuzzy black blobs. There is no way it would have been possible to get identifiable views of pigmy geese from here, and I guess anyone claiming them was a local who was just identifying ducks based on “general impressions of size and shape”.
And that was the day. Drew dropped me at my hotel in Atherton and returned to Cairns. I saw 67 species of birds today, of which two were lifers (Brown Treecreeper and Blue-faced Parrotfinch) and 13 were year-birds. The most annoying miss was the Golden Bowerbird because Mt Hypipamee is, I think, the only likely place to see it.
Australian Little Grebe, Australian Brush Turkey, Australian Pelican, Australian Darter, Little Black Cormorant, Little Pied Cormorant, Black-necked Stork, Black Swan, Magpie Goose, Wandering Whistling Duck, Australian Black Duck, Grey Teal, White-eyed Duck (Hardhead), Brolga, Common Coot, Purple Swamphen, Dusky Moorhen, Banded Rail, Great Egret, Little Egret, Eastern Cattle Egret, Nankeen Night Heron, Royal Spoonbill, Australian White Ibis, Pied Stilt, Comb-crested Jacana, Spur-winged Plover, White-bellied Sea Eagle, Black Kite, Whistling Kite, Nankeen Kestrel, Torresian Imperial Pigeon, Crested Pigeon, Bar-shouldered Dove, Peaceful Dove, Red-tailed Black Cockatoo, Greater Sulphur-crested Cockatoo, Australian King Parrot, Pheasant Coucal, Shining Bronze Cuckoo, Common Kookaburra, Forest Kingfisher, Australian Swiftlet, Welcome Swallow, Large-billed Gerygone, Yellow-throated Scrubwren, Atherton Scrubwren, Spectacled Monarch, Grey Fantail, Willy Wagtail, Eastern Yellow Robin, Pale-Yellow Robin, Grey-headed Robin, Golden Whistler, Bower’s Shrike-Thrush, Rufous Shrike-Thrush, Brown Treecreeper, White-throated Treecreeper, Magpie-Lark, Mistletoebird, Yellow-faced Honeyeater, Bridled Honeyeater, Blue-faced Parrotfinch, Red-browed Finch, Common Mynah, Pied Currawong, Victoria’s Riflebird.
