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| #303 Pale-vented Bush-hen |
Every
now and
then
I think it's good to take up a challenge: set oneself
a goal and go for it. It
may
take a while to
reach your
target.
It was
many years before
I finally
attained
my
goal of seeing all 234 bird families in the world; that milestone
was notched
up
in
Panama in 2015 with the sighting of Sapayoa.
 |
| 2018 Zone of Happiness |
Birders
often embrace a Big Year as a worthy goal. The idea is to see as many
species as possible within a
period of 12
months. A
Big Year
might be nation-wide
or international, but I thought
the Sunshine Coast region would do nicely for 2018. That wasn't the
plan initially. Ken Cross, the leader of BirdLife
Australia Sunshine Coast, had for
a few years been
running a competition for local birders to see who could photograph
the most birds in a calendar year. Part of the goal was to encourage
up and coming birders to improve their skills by identifying images
posted on a Facebook page created
each year for what
was dubbed The Game.
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| #1 Brush Cuckoo |
I thought initially that I'd join The Game in
2018 for
a hoot,
but that soon morphed into a full-on Big Year. I
set a goal of photographing 300 species in the region in the calendar
year.
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| #30 Eastern Grass Owl |
The
area covered for The Game is the so-called Zone of Happiness. The
zone extends beyond the boundaries of the Sunshine Coast and Noosa
councils: north to Inskip Point, south to Bribie Island and west to
beyond Kilcoy and Amamoor, with an outlier in the Sheepstation
Conservation Park south of Caboolture. My first photograph for The
Game was a Russet-tailed Thrush behind Yandina. Although
identifiable, I thought the image unworthy so discarded it; another
seven months went by before I managed another photograph of this
species!
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| #31 Grey Ternlet |
As it transpired, quantity not quality is the order of The
Game for photographs. So long as an image is identifiable by someone
in the group, that's adequate for it to pass muster; quite a few
photographs on the page, including some of mine, are not as sharp as
one might wish. That's fine: it's a birding indulgence first and
foremost, not a photographic contest.
The
winning total for The Game in 2017 was 256 species photographed by
Carolyn Scott. I thought then that was an impressive effort. I've
seen a
total of 348 species in the Zone of Happiness, with observations
stretching back to the early-1970s. Two species – Eastern
Bristlebird and Emu – are now extinct in the area. Many others are
vagrants or rare visitors, especially seabirds. (Birds seen on
pelagic trips offshore are counted for The Game.)
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| #158 Shining Flycatcher |
Most
species in the region are common and widespread so are not difficult
to photograph – the so-called low-hanging fruit. Others are
numerous enough but can take a bit of work to nail down: Rose-crowned
Fruit-Dove and Russet-tailed Thrush are good examples. Yet others are
skulking, elusive and difficult to see, let alone photograph. Rails
and owls feature prominently in the latter group.
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| #200 Brolga |
As
the early months of
2018
went
by, I worked out a plan to boost the
prospects of snaring the maximum possible number of birds
before December 31. I had some advantages. I'd done a good deal of
guiding over the years so knew of reliable sites for cryptic species
such as Pale-vented Bush-hen and Black-breasted Buttonquail. I
organise the Mooloolaba
pelagic trips so was
able to
amass a reasonable collection of seabirds.
On
the other hand, I was going to be away from
home for
more than three months of 2018,
so some
visiting
birds
would
inevitably be
missed
(as
transpired
with
the likes of White-browed
Woodswallow and Freckled Duck).
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| #221 Australian Owlet-Nightjar |
For
many targets,
it was a
matter
of studying
ebird
records, Google
Earth and Google Maps to gather
information
on distribution, habitat
and access. I figured that the dry woodlands north of Gympie, for
instance,
might work for species that hadn't been recorded in previous years of
The Game, like
Speckled Warbler and Weebill. Or the paddocks and lightly
wooded country
around Kilcoy or
west of Amamoor might
harbour
local
rarities like
Yellow-rumped Thornbill and Black-chinned Honeyeater.
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| #225 Pectoral Sandpiper |
As
the year marched on, various pieces of what I imagined to be a big
jigsaw puzzle gradually fell into place. Pelagic trips offshore
ensured that both summer-visiting seabirds (like Short-tailed
Shearwater and Tahiti Petrel) and winter visitors (like Antarctic
Prion and Providence Petrel) were in the bag. The
odd rarity,
notably Grey Ternlet, didn't go astray. Six pelagic trips were undertaken during the year.
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| #246 Red-browed Treecreeper |
I
managed
to photograph all the region's nocturnal birds:
Australian Owlet-Nightjar; two nightjars (Large-tailed and
White-throated);
two frogmouths (Marbled and Tawny) and six owls (Eastern Grass, Barn,
Masked, Powerful, Barking and
Southern Boobook). Some
of the
trickier waterbirds snapped
included
Spotless Crake, Baillon's Crake, Pale-vented Bush-hen, Australian
Little Bittern and
Lewin's Rail.
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| #247 Masked Owl |
I
put in some serious driving time. I travelled twice to Bribie Island
in one day because I learned after I got home from
the first visit that
a Radjah Shelduck had
turned
up at Sandstone Point, just 1km from where I was.
I got the shelduck, and it didn't stay around, but I
saw
the species later in the year anyway at Tin Can Bay.
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| #250 Powerful Owl |
Participating in
The Game meant that I disclosed a fair number of sites held close to
my chest for many years. But
I
learned through other participants
of sites I'd not known of.
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| #274 Black-bellied Storm-Petrel |
It
helped that I went on 10 campouts of 1-3 nights in the region during
the year - Charlie Moreland Park, Kenilworth Bluff, Conondale
National Park, Amamoor, Yandilla, Brooyar State Forest, Rainbow
Beach, Tin Can Bay, Cooloola and Noosa North Shore – as well as
overnight stays on Bribie Island and in Kilcoy and Tiaro (the latter
outside the zone, but to access the northern woodlands).
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| #285 Regent Honeyeater |
I
had just a single shot at quite a few birds - that is they were seen
(and photographed) just once during the year: Eastern
Grass Owl, Grey Ternlet, Streaked Shearwater, Marbled Frogmouth,
Brush Bronzewing, Oriental Cuckoo, Baillon's Crake, Brolga,
Fluttering Shearwater, Plum-headed Finch, Superb Fruit-Dove, Pectoral
Sandpiper, Barn Owl, Large-tailed Nightjar, Glossy Black Cockatoo,
Masked Owl, Sooty Owl, Black-breasted Buttonquail, Red-footed Booby,
Red-browed Treecreeper, Shy Albatross, Yellow Thornbill, Barking Owl,
Weebill, Green Pygmy-Goose, Regent Honeyeater, Lesser Crested Tern,
Grey Plover, Southern Emu-wren, Sanderling, Pacific Swift, Black
Bittern. As
the year drew to an end, the pickings became few and far between.
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| #286 Lesser Crested Tern |
The
vagaries of birding are well illustrated by the very last bird for
2018 – Red-winged Parrot, seen on December 31. One had been seen on
the outskirts of Gunalda a few days earlier. I was at the site at the
crack of dawn and searched the area diligently without success for
two hours. I returned mid-afternoon and there was the bird.
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| #293 Radjah Shelduck |
As
for my favourite
bird of the year, I can think of a
few.
Photographing Southern Emu-wren
and
Brush Bronzewing at
Cooloola was uplifting. They
weren't great images but I'd
not seen the emu-wren
in Queensland since the
1970s,
and
the bronzewing just a couple of times since
then.
I photographed Eastern Ground Parrot a few times before eventually
managing a half-decent image.
Pectoral
Sandpiper near Toorbul was
nice, as
were
Masked Owl near Yandilla and Eastern Grass Owl at
Bli Bli. The Regent Honeyeater at Carlos Pt was an extraordinary out-of-range record.
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| #300 Black Bittern |
I
was very happy to bag a
Red-browed Treecreeper, in the southern Conondales. This species was
once regularly encountered in the Conondale and Blackall ranges but
numbers
appear to have crashed; in
the almost 10 years since I moved to the Sunshine Coast, I'd seen it
just once previously. I believe it is one of a number of birds
in the region to
be impacted by climate change.
Probably
top of the pops was Black Bittern at Tin Can Bay. I've seen the
species occasionally but regularly in
the region, though
hadn't
managed to photograph it before. It was also
the 300th species for
the year.
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| #302 Lewin's Rail |
I ended up with 310
species photographed in
2018.
The Zone of Happiness
in 2019 will be quite different from 2018 because its boundaries
extend well westward, netting a suite of extra birds, so comparing
2018 with 2019 will not be comparing apples with apples. I
spotted
but failed to photograph three species
– Black-tailed
Native-hen, Swift Parrot, Budgerigar - so
saw a total of 313 species for 2018 in
the Sunshine Coast region.
Now it's 2019, and time to move on. Let's
see now. Getting my world lifelist up from 7920 to 8000 would be
nice.
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| #310 Red-winged Parrot |
