Australia Part 35: Albert's Lyrebird at O'Reilly's & birding Minnippi Parklands, Brisbane Oct 12 скачать в хорошем качестве

Australia Part 35: Albert's Lyrebird at O'Reilly's & birding Minnippi Parklands, Brisbane Oct 12

Today is check-out day, but ofc we made full use of our remaining hours! We started 5:30 with a counter-clockwise lap around Booyong Boardwalk, to get as soon as possible to the area where we'd heard the Lyrebird yesterday. No sign of it, though, and no sound either. We might have glimpsed a distant fleeing Noisy Pitta, but that was an iffy visual. It was heard in that direction, but... High up in the canopy we heard Paradise Riflebird, then saw medium-sized birds fly away and disappear in the foliage, not really a visual on that desired bird either! The deep forest gloom didn't offer details, not at these distances. We took the Border Track back towards the lodge and suddenly we jumped when a large ball of stuff (packed dirt and leaves, probably) bounced down the slope and over the track in front of us. We heard energetic scrabbling and thought "Oh, Brushturkey again" because that wasn't the first time we'd heard that sound along the trails... However, when we almost had passed the bird that was foraging a few meters from the trail I threw it a glance and stopped dead and tugged my partner's arm and hissed "LOOK! It's the LYREBIRD!" And it wasn't alone, it had a mostly grown chick that she tried to show how to find food for itself. It mostly preened and sometimes begged for morsels of food (like a teenager?). We observed and tried to take photos and video for minutes, while the birds totally ignored our presence. Taking photos was very difficult becaust the birds are so big and they were so close! Even at 100 mm it wasn't easy... Then it was the vegetation, of course, as luck would have it it was quite sparse here. When it was close to 7 AM we had to move on to get breakfast, but after 8 we took a last walk along Booyong Boardwalk but saw nothing new. We heard the Rose Robin again, still no visual. At 10 AM we checked out and began our drive down the mountain, with the windows down. We were ready to stop when possible, which wasn't often due to the onelane road. The first stop gave us a new bird: a Square-tailed Kite could be glimpsed through the canopy. Way down, at the Kamarun Lookout, we had a nice legstretcher while admiring the magnificent view. Our next place to stop was Minnippi Parkland outside Brisbane where we took a long walk. We saw our first Noisy Miners here... The most fun observation were two Channel-billed Cuckoos flying in some kind of formation and we actually got photos of them! At the lake we had nice views of Murray River Turtles and Australian Water Dragons plus Black Swans. At 3:30 PM we left, filled the car with gas and returned it before taking the walk over to Ibis Brisbane Airport Hotel. After check-in we took a nice fish-and-chips dinner, packed our bags in preparation for our flight to Adelaide tomorrow.