sunshinecoastbirds: 2024

I was distracted in my Nambour garden in the Sunshine Coast hinterland this morning by a cacophany of alarm calls from Noisy Miners, Blue-faced Honeyeaters and assorted others. That usually indicates they’ve spotted a snake, possum or raptor. I located the source of the mayhem and spotted a Noisy Miner in its last moments as it was being constricted by a small Carpet Python. The miner presumably had been one of those making a racket when it approached the snake too closely.

The miner was being constricted in this image

I watched for the next hour as the snake tried to devour its victim. It contorted itself into various positions to facilitate this before eventually the miner was dislodged from a tree fork. It was in position, hanging vertically with its snake attached to the miner’s head. Normally this is when the prey would be swallowed, head first.

However, the miner was simply too big. The snake tried many positions, but these images suggest it was clearly unable to get its mouth around the head. Perhaps it may have succeeded had it tackled the bill first. In any event, the snake eventually gave up and the miner dropped to the ground; the bird would have been easier to consume there, but no attempt was made to recover it.

In other garden news, the Noisy Miners and friends have located several Eastern Ringtail Possums in recent weeks, including the female with a well-developed joey outside our garage.

Emerald Dove and Wonga Pigeon are among our avian visitors, with the latter a regular at our seed feeder.

Wonga Pigeon

Emerald Dove

Wedge-tailed Eagle occasionally passes over.

Australian Boobook recently put on a show. Surprisingly we hadn’t heard the species in our four years of residence at the property.

Dusky Honeyeater was another recent addition to the garden list.

Pheasant Coucal is a breeding resident and a regular at the birdbath.

Eastern Whipbird is a rare visitor.

Eastern Bluetongue, Carpet Python and Common Tree-Snake are reptilian regulars.

Carpet Python

Eastern Bluetongue

Common Tree Snake

Spotted-tailed Quoll

Crossing the South Australia border into Victoria and then NSW, we had 3 nights at the Euston Club RV Camp on the banks of the Murray River, catching up with our friend Kathy Haydon for the next week. Regent Parrot, a beautiful and threatened species, is common here and we had numerous encounters, with birds often about the camping area.

Regent Parrot

Musk Lorikeet was numerous across the river in Robinvale, Victoria. Yellow Rosella was common everywhere along the rivers.

Yellow Rosella

Musk Lorikeet

Next stop was Mamanga Camp in Yanga National Park outside Balranald. This time on the banks of the Murrumbidgee River. Western Gerygone, Eastern Bluebonnet, Diamond Firetail and Stubble Quail were among the birds here.

Eastern Bluebonnet

Western Gerygone

Pallid Cuckoo and White-winged Fairywren were in the mix.

Murray River at Euston

Pallid Cuckoo

White-winged Fairywren

We moved on to Darlington Point, again camped by the river, where Long-billed Corella was common. A couple of Pink Cockatoos were spotted on the way from Balranald roadside.

Long-billed Corella

Superb Parrot was seen and heard around our camp with 3 birds sitting nicely in Murrumbidgee Valley Regional Park.

Superb Parrot

We overnighted in Cowra before heading north for a 3-night stay in the beautiful but poorly named Dunns Swamp Camp Ground in Wollemi National Park.

Dunns Swamp

Stunning scenery aside, the highlight was being serenaded at night by a pair of Powerful Owls.

Powerful Owl

This is a good spot for Rockwarbler and I saw them closely a few times.

Rockwarbler

Other birds included Striated Thornbill and Eastern Shrike-tit. Chestnut-rumped Heathwren showed briefly but refused to be photographed. Gang Gang Cockatoo was heard a couple of times and seen briefly. A pair of Musk Duck frequented the dam.

Eastern Shrike-tit

Musk Duck

Striated Thornbill

Mammals were scarce – Common Brushtail about the camp and Red-necked Wallaby.

Common Brushtail

Red-necked Wallaby

Our final camp was further north – Mulligans Camp in Gibralter Range National Park. Red-browedTreecreeper showed nicely during our first hike, to The Needles.

Red-browed Treecreeper

Gibralter Range

Scarlet Robin and Rose Robin - the latter singing so evidently breeding and not on migration - were about the campground.

Rose Robin

Scarlet Robin

In a heath patch on the 9km Tree Fern Loop track, a pair of Southern Emu-wren provided entertainment.

Southern Emu-wren (female, male below)

The stars of the place though were the mammals. Spotted-tailed Quoll was known to haunt the campground at night, visiting camp sites in search of food. Other vistitors were seeing them during our stay so on the final night, having failed to locate one, I put out lures. A bowl of lemon-flavoured tuna and a bowl of spicy Indian-flavoured tuna. The latter was ignored but the former did the trick. A fine male Spotted-tailed Quoll turned up. Later in the evening a second quoll showed, evidently a different animal, smaller and more lightly coloured so probably a female.

Spotted-tailed Quoll

Quoll scat

The other big highlight was Parma Wallaby. I saw 15-20 small macropods over three nights and believe all were this species and none were pademelons. There has been some debate about the identity of the animals here. The two pademelon species occur in rainforest; Red-necked happily frequents dry vine scrub but it is still rainforest. This national park is in the granite highlands of northern NSW and southern Queensland - a region not favoured by pademelons. The habitat at Mulligans is open forest with a shrubby understorey; the nearest rainforest is 1.5km away. It is not pademelon habitat.

The species is not difficult to identify. It lacks the clearly defined rufous patches that are key features of Red-necked and Red-legged Pademelons. I photographed 3 different Parma Wallabies and all were uniformly coloured although they varied somewhat from rufous-grey to grey with just a hint of rufous. They showed facial patterns, unlike pademelons – especially a white line on the face. The small white hip stripe is difficult to see but is evident in one image. The clear white – not greyish – throat and breast was to me the most obvious feature pointing to Parma Wallaby. Some of the animals I saw had white tips to the tail. A darkish upper dorsal strip was evident.