Square-tailed Kite nesting and Shining Flycatchers galore - Burrum Heads & Bundaberg

Square-tailed Kite on nest

A Square-tailed Kite on the nest and multiple sightings of Shining Flycatcher were highlights of a visit this week to Burrum Heads and Bundaberg. We camped for three nights at Burrum Heads before moving on to Boonooroo (the subject of a separate post), and visited Bundaberg for the day.

Trevor Quested & Greg Roberts

In Bundaberg, we met up with Trevor and Annie Quested, along with Bundaberg birding legend Eric Zillmann, and headed off to an active nest being used by a Square-tailed Kite in open woodland north of the city.

Square-tailed Kite on nest

Weather conditions were lousy and the most we saw of the bird was its head occasionally showing. The nest was about 20 metres up in a Lemon-scented Gum. A single, well-developed chick was in the nest but was not visible to us.

Square-tailed Kite

Here's a more comprehensive image of this rare raptor; thanks to Geoff Jones of Barra Imaging for this one.

Eric Zillmann

Eric Zillmann reports that a pair of Square-tailed Kites has been nesting at this same site, near Smith's Crossing - usually in different nests but over a total area of just a few hundred square metres - each year since 1985. They have successfully raised young in all but a handful of nesting seasons. Usually one young is raised; although two or three chicks may hatch, the parents dispose of the others, presumably because of the difficulty of providing sufficient food. A new nest is built most years but occasionally an old one is topped up with twigs and used again.
I've written previously about Eric's knowledge of the Paradise Parrot; he is a wealth of knowledge about birds in the Bundaberg-Gin Gin region.

White-winged Triller

In Trevor and Annie's garden outside Bundaberg, a delightful male White-winged Triller was busy building a nest.

Shining Flycatcher

From Burrum Heads, I spent a morning along the Burrum River in my kayak. I saw a total of seven Shining Flycatchers and heard two others.

Shining Flycatcher

Five of the seven birds were males. Other birds seen from the kayak included:

White-bellied Sea-Eagle

Mangrove Honeyeater

Pied Cormorant

Brahminy Kite