Yungaburra – Lake Eacham
The insect bites that I got at Sunland in Cairns have been driving me to distraction. There are about a dozen on each ankle and they are at the stage where they are super itchy welts which feel especially itchy when walking, I think because the socks rub them. Definitely the ones right around the tops of the shoes get rubbed when walking, which makes them even itchier. I don’t even know if they
are flea bites. They might have been from bed bugs, except they are only around my ankles which would be weird. They are really hanging around as well – as I write this it is six days since I left Cairns and they are still giving me grief.
I spent all day and the evening at Lake Eacham today. There was no rain to speak of, although some thunder suggested it was going to.
A number of water birds were seen on the early morning walk between Yungaburra and The Gillies cafe. None were in water, all were in flight, with large flocks of Magpie Geese and Australian White Ibis, a small group of Australian Black Ducks, and a single Great Egret. I’m not sure where they were coming from or going to, because I didn’t see any at the lake.
Being a weekday the road to the lake was quiet (last time I came here it was a Sunday, and even early there were lots of cars). There
were still people already at the lake when I arrived, but only a few.
At the lake’s car park, a different bird than usual was a Pacific Baza in one of the trees.
I did my first circuit of the lake counter-clockwise. This turned out to be a good decision because not far into the walk I found a White-headed Pigeon, which was one of the birds on my wanted list. It was in a dense tree overhanging the lake, so there was not just that tree’s foliage in the way but also that of several other trees in front. I had barely seen it crash in through the leaves so all I knew was it was some kind of big bird, and it took a little while before it moved enough to see it was a pigeon. Then it took even longer until it actually came into view. I had thought it would probably be a Wompoo because they were pretty common here, but then its white head was revealed, with the ruffly feathers which make it look like it has a striped neck.
I was about two-thirds of the way round the lake when I had another stroke of luck. I thought I’d seen a bird on the forest floor and was trying to see it (I couldn’t, and it may have been my imagination) when three ladies came walking along and asked what I’d seen. I said it was probably nothing, but added that I was actually looking for a Tooth-billed Bowerbird, whereupon they gave me directions to where they could be found on the trail!
The Tooth-billed Bowerbird was the main bird I wanted to see here after the Cassowary (and I never did see a Cassowary while at Yungaburra). They are said to be common at Lake Eacham, and this is apparently the easiest place to see them because they have display arenas right near the trail. Unlike most bowerbird which build elaborate constructions of sticks and decorate them with colourful flowers and other such trinkets, the Tooth-billed Bowerbird just clears a little space on the ground and places fresh leaves on the dirt. Then he sits on a branch nearby and calls until a female comes by to see what he has to show her.
The ladies told me that up ahead, after a steep section of the track there was a bowerbird arena near some cut logs, and to just listen out for his calls. They also said the spot had been marked by a stick on the trail.
This sounded like I would now be seeing a Tooth-billed Bowerbird. Unfortunately, “some cut logs” and “a stick on the trail” aren’t very helpful instructions on a forest trail where there are many cut logs and where every metre there is a stick lying on the trail.
I found the bit where the steep section of the trail plateaus out and there were some cut logs right there (whenever a big branch or a tree falls across the trail it is cut into sections and moved to the side to rot down, hence “cut logs” are frequent). I spent ages here, thinking this must be the spot, even though I couldn’t hear anything which sounded like it might be a bowerbird.
I eventually moved further along the trail and then I heard a persistent loud call coming from somewhere not far into the forest. This was the exact same place where two days ago I had heard this same call and had spent a long time trying to see what was making the noise. After a frustrating period of time a Rufous Shrike-Thrush had emerged so I had assumed it was that. Now I wasn’t so sure.
Today was just as frustrating. The call was so loud and harsh and continuous that it seemed like the bird should be easy to find. But I couldn’t. The call didn’t sound like the recording on eBird but it had a similar “feel”. I wasted the best part of an hour here thinking this
had to be the Tooth-billed Bowerbird.
I gave up eventually, figuring I’d try a bit further ahead and could always come back down here if that didn’t produce anything. I walked a minute or two – and suddenly came across not just a stick on the trail but three sticks in the shape of an arrow on the trail, between two cut logs, pointing at the forest! Great. “Sticks in the shape of an arrow” would have been a much better instruction than just “a stick on the trail”!!
This was clearly the place, and almost immediately I heard the same call as I’d been hearing earlier. So, definitely a Tooth-billed Bowerbird then.
This time I didn’t have to wait too long. A bowerbird suddenly flew out and perched on an open branch where it sat calling. It had its back to me but I could see it clearly, and by moving to the side I could just see its streaked belly and its stubby bill. It stayed there for a minute or so, then flew to a branch further away where it was mostly hidden behind a tree trunk.
I continued on the trail, and only another minute or two further on I heard another bowerbird calling. This one was right by the trail but buried somewhere inside tangles of wait-a-while vines. As I was trying to see exactly where it was another bird flew into the branches of a tree above. This was also a Tooth-billed Bowerbird, presumably a female because it sat there staring down into the vines while the calls from below intensified, and then the calling bird suddenly emerged onto a thin branch where it stayed for several minutes.
Having multiple males within such a short section of the track I think there must be a lek situation here, with the males making their arenas in close proximity to one another so that the females can move between them choosing who has the best display.
This part of the trail is very close to the car park, well inside the first kilometre if going clockwise. The first male you would come to (which was the last one I saw) is right where there is an informational sign about wait-a-while vines – his arena must be directly in front of this sign. The last male (if continuing in the clockwise direction) is at the sign about Brush Turkeys. Once you hit the steep downhill part of the trail you’ve gone too far.
I loafed around the picnic area for an hour or so. Ate some sandwiches, had a little snooze. Figured I’d better go round again in case of Cassowary. I saw one of the bowerbirds again.
There are a few really big fig trees along the trail, some of which have huge roots going
over the trail. There are some photos in an earlier post. While doing my second walk around the lake I found a Scrub Python in one of these trees. I took some photos with my phone, which because the snake was really close came out well enough to put in the gallery.
Scrub Pythons are also commonly known as Amethystine Pythons. The New Guinea populations have been recently split off from the Australian ones, so now there are two species. The New Guinea ones got to keep the name Amethystine Python while the poor Australian ones got lumbered with the low-brow name of Scrub Python. Sad.
After completing my second loop of the lake I waited around the picnic area again, twiddling my thumbs until dark.
There are several kinds of possums found here, including Lemuroid Possums and Herbert River Ringtails, neither of which I have seen.
As darkness fell I set off on the trail around the lake for the third time, where I only saw two White-tailed Rats and some frogs (a White-lipped Tree Frog and several Rainforest Stoney-Creek Frogs). I took three hours to go round the trail and when I got back to the parking area had to face that I still had 1.5 hours walk back to Yungaburra ahead of me.
On the Lake Eacham Road (which is also forest) I saw literally nothing, not even Cane Toads which were everywhere along the lake trail. I did hear the “falling bomb” calls of Sooty Owls which was neat.
I’m seriously considering giving up on spotlighting!
I saw 39 species of birds today:
Great Crested Grebe, Magpie Goose, Australian Black Duck, Australian Brush Turkey, Orange-footed Scrubfowl, Great Cormorant, Little Pied Cormorant, Little Black Cormorant, Great Egret, Eastern Cattle Egret, Australian White Ibis, Pacific Baza, Bush Stone-Curlew, White-headed Pigeon, Wompoo Fruit Pigeon, Emerald Dove, Greater Sulphur-crested Cockatoo, Common Kookaburra, Forest Kingfisher, Welcome Swallow, Golden-headed Cisticola, Large-billed Scrubwren, Spectacled Monarch, Black-faced Monarch, Pied Monarch, Golden Whistler, Pale-Yellow Robin, Grey-headed Robin, Rufous Shrike-Thrush, Eastern Whipbird, Silvereye, Lewin’s Honeyeater, Dusky Myzomela, Chestnut-breasted Mannikin, Common Mynah, Australian Figbird, Spotted Catbird, Tooth-billed Bowerbird, Victoria’s Riflebird.
And yes, Mission Beach is the place I was thinking of in relation to Cassowary. You just gotta keep on looking.
