Weekends That Were - March 2018

31.3.18

Anstead

Due to unavailability of my car in recent days – it’s required emergency surgery on the gear box – I haven’t been out and about much so Mr D picked me up at 6 and we headed out to Anstead. The weather of late has been ‘wet’ to say the least. It’s been raining almost every day as a messy cyclone moved up and down the coast threatening to come ashore up north and meanwhile dumping showers of rain on a regular basis.

We headed up the usual track and it was quite birdy. Not a huge variety but enough to keep us looking.

Overall the morning was OK. We had 1 White-throated Needletail overhead – a bit late in the season. One Fan-tailed Cuckoo called incessantly and a pair of Varied Sittellas put in a high-in-a-dead-tree appearance. The usual flocks of Black-faced Cuckoo-shrikes and Spangled Drongos moved through hunting insects and a male Common Cicadabird joined them briefly.

The highlight of the morning was the butterflies – Monarch, Common Crow, Purple Crow, Small Dusky-blue (only seen them on Moreton Is before now), Small Yellow, Lesser Wanderer, Dainty Swallowtail, 3 White-banded Planes and Brown Ringlet.

Small Dusky-blue
On the small stone wall over the dry creek line produced several Elegant Snake-eyed Skinks Cryptoblepharus pulcher and a single Yellow-headed Snail Parasitic Blowfly Amenia imperialis.

Elegant Snake-eyed Skink  Cryptoblepharus pulcher 

Yellow-headed Snail Parasitic Blowfly Amenia imperialis    

While looking at a Metallic Green Leaf Beetle Callidemum sp Mr D pointed out a large caterpillar which was that of a Wattle Notodontid Moth Neola semiaurata which was quite impressive.

Wattle Notodontid Moth Neola semiaurata 

We decided to try the Westvets café beside Anstead for breakfast and were pleasantly pleased with the breakfast results.

17.3.18

Oxley

Mr D’s choice and he plumped for Oxley. A birdy morning with a couple of nice things – a Baza overhead was my fifth for the site and a Royal Spoonbill on the ponds and a female Leaden Flycatcher were new from the other day. Other than that it was a fairly average Oxley morning’s birding after which we retired to the pleasures of Café Europa for a very organised, Hungarian breakfast.

13.3.18

Oxley

The track was pretty quiet. Brown Honeyeaters dominated as they returned in number after the summer. The main excitement on the walk out were a covey of 4 Brown Quail who fed quite unconcernedly around my feet at the second ‘causeway’.

At the ponds the usual stuff, plus an Australian Grebe, on the way back 3 Chestnut-breasted Mannikins and a Pheasant Coucal, in flight mode, added themselves to the list. I was only there an hour and a half in total – there really wasn’t anything to write home about.

Butterflies – a few Evening Browns and Monarchs and 1 Varied Eggfly.

11.3.18

Minnippi

Eager to catch up with Mr P before he takes off on his UK adventure I picked him up at 6 and we arrived on site shortly thereafter. It was a dull, grey, wet morning and a heavish shower of rain caught us in the open between the Alley and the lake – and cut short our morning’s birding in reality.

There wasn’t much of anything about. We did have a poor view of a Little Shrike Thrush on the M1 track - a first for me on this track.
The Black Swan that had arrived a few weeks ago was still present on the lake, but apart from that…..(Jesus, it’s bad when a Black Swan is one of the most exciting things on view….)

The Tawny Frogmouths were back in their usual tree looking miserably damp, but other than that it was a short list.

We retired to Belesis and the pleasures of being served breakfast by Georgia.

10.3.18

North Stradbroke Island

The winds were predicted to be 30+ knots and southerly. They had been that way for several days apparently.

I moan often enough about never having any decent winds at Straddie so it was almost an obligation to drag my knackered semi-recovered-from-Japan ass out to Pt Lookout or put up and shut up.

On site, as usual, at 8. The winds were certainly 30+ and gusting around the corner of the protective rock enough to shake the scope.

The seas was wild and white-capped. The occasional set throwing spray high enough too obscure my vision.

The birds were all over the place. Mainly Wedge-tailed Shearwaters heading south, while Common Noddys seemed to have given up and, in the main, be heading north, mostly very close in. The occasional Wedgie screamed north like a petrel and during the morning the numbers of Noddys heading south gradually increased. An accurate count was, therefor, impossible as I alone couldn’t cover both inshore and offshore passage.

I stuck it out till 10.30 without seeing anything too exciting. I did have a single Pomarine Skua blown north, 3 Black Noddys head south and 1 Great-winged (or Grey-faced) Petrel head north. There could easily have been more of the latter two, but with the super strong winds and choppy 2 meter seas it was hard to be sure that it was just a Wedgie heading north and miss the individual Noddys in between the sets.