Friday, September 23:
At dawn this morning we met a local birding expert, Ronda Green, for a full day outing in different landscapes in this part of Queensland. We visited two locations on Bribie Island, just a bit north along the coast, and then drove about an hour further north and inland to Mary Cairncross Park, a temperate rain forest at much higher altitude. In both locations we saw new species of birds, and at Mary Cairncross saw our first kangaroo species, a small wallaby called a Red-legged Pademelon. Did you know that all kangaroos can manage three different ages of babies at once? They can have one that’s out of the pouch but comes back for a sip of a lower calorie milk from time to time, an infant latched on to a specific high calorie nipple, and a fertilized egg waiting for the right time to develop further (usually when a nipple spot becomes available). The idea of two different milks for specific nipples blew our minds.
We learned that larger birds, of the sort we saw yesterday, are so dominant in suburban environments that smaller birds stay in rural and forested areas. As we were a little more in the wild today, we saw some amazing big birds (including our first Kookaburra) and beautiful small ones. Searching for small birds in dense foliage on a beautiful day felt just right.
Pictured: Golden Whistler, Red-legged Pademelon, Wompoo Fruit-Dove, Australian Water Dragon
Amazing colors
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