Sunshine Coast Birds

Birding and other wildlife experiences from the Sunshine Coast and elsewhere in Australia - and from overseas - with scribblings about travel, environmental issues, kayaking, hiking and camping.

Friday, 31 May 2019

Peach Trees & Jimna State Forest, May 2019

Diamond Firetail

Peach Trees camping ground near Jimna is one of our favourite retreats and this week we had two nights there, our first visit since April 2016, when Masked Owl and Powerful Owl were seen. No owls this time and not much in the way of birds about the camping ground, with Peregrine Falcon and Crested Shrike-tit the only species of interest. Black-striped Wallaby, Red-necked Wallaby, Swamp Wallaby and Eastern Grey Kangaroo were about the camping ground.

Crested Shrike-tit

Black-striped Wallaby
Boebuck and Common Brushtail were feeding in the same fruiting white cedar, while a short spotlighting trip up the road turned up a couple of Eastern Ringtails and large male Koala.

Koala
Of special interest is an area of open woodland nearby. From the turnoff to Peach Trees near Jimna, proceed 4.5km north along the Kilcoy-Murgon Road to its junction with Yabba Road. Turn right into Yabba Road for 200m to a small dam. The site in Jimna State Forest can also be reached by driving or hiking 3.5km from the camping ground on a rougher forestry road. An extraordinary range of dry country birds occurs here. It's something of a mystery because the woodland is quite small and surrounded by the mosaic of open forest, rainforest and wet sclerophyll forest that typifies this region. Best of the woodland special birds was Diamond Firetail, here at the northern limit of its range. I saw one bird on two occasions during 3.5 hours at the site.

Diamond Firetail
Other drier country birds that are scarce east of the Great Divide in the area included Yellow-tufted Honeyeater, Fuscous Honeyeater and Speckled Warbler.

Fuscous Honeyeater

Speckled Warbler

Yellow-tufted Honeyeater
Good numbers of Brown Treecreeper were about. This species does not appear to occur anywhere else in the Sunshine Coast hinterland.

Brown Treecreeper
A surprising number of Rufous Songlark - about 8-10 birds – were seen. This species is thought to largely leave South-East Queensland in winter, with a small number overwintering, but clearly these birds are spending the cooler months here.

Rufous Songlark
Other nice birds included quite a few more Crested Shrike-tits, White-bellied Cuckoo-shrike, Dusky Woodswallow and Jacky Winter.

Dusky Woodswallow

Jacky Winter

White-bellied Cuckoo-shrike
A small herd of introduced Red Deer was surprised to spot us. Ebird list.

Red Deer




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