POWER LINE PERCHERS

We moved back to Kureelpa, a rural location in the Sunshine Coast hinterland, late last year, just down the road from the house where I first started my blog nearly five years ago. http://qldbirder.blogspot.com.au/2010/10/backyard-pics.html

The views are similar and the birds are familiar, like old friends we just haven't seen for a while.

View from patio

There are some power lines that run along a road easement opposite our back patio, a favourite hangout for the locals. Pale-headed Rosellas often land with a chatter and flash of colours, but they are flighty and don't hang around for long. 

Pale-headed Rosella

P.H. Rosellas - immature on right

P.H. Rosella - immature

The biggest honeyeater in the neighbourhood the Blue-faced, uses its perch to check for rival species encroaching on favourite feeding trees.   

Blue-faced Honeyeater

Our biggest kingfisher is intent on finding prey in the paddock below and doesn't concern itself with chasing off competitors.

Laughing Kookaburra

And one of our largest pigeons drops in occasionally, often during showery weather for some reason.

White-headed Pigeon

A pigeon pair

A convenient place to munch on a mantis for this young cuckoo-shrike.

Black-faced Cuckoo-shrike - immature

A butcherbird gamely balances on one leg, with the other out of action through injury. 

Pied Butcherbird

This male Magpie-lark was taking a breather, after earlier being involved in an antiphonal duet with his partner. She was on the verandah rail doing the same.

  

Magpie-lark - male

Magpie-lark - female

A couple of immature Australian Magpies preferred the fence posts, another favourite perch for many, while engaging in some warble and natter.

Australian Magpie

Another patio view

Pacific dawn 

Cheers & Happy Birding

NORTHWEST NSW

Travelling east from Brewarrina, over the next couple of weeks we visited various areas while enjoying the spectacular winter weather. These honeyeaters were basking in the sun next to our van at Lightning Ridge.

Blue-faced Honeyeaters

As were this pair of swallows on our washing line, while staying near the farming community of Burren Junction. 

This small town is renowned in the Aussie birding world as the temporary home of a vagrant wader from Asia in 2006, a Grey-Headed Lapwing. I twitched it with three friends, along with probably hundreds of others in the four months it stayed. This record was a first for Australia and possibly the Southern Hemisphere.

Welcome Swallows 

Nothing quite as exciting this time around, although the sunsets were quite impressive.

Sunset at Burren Junction

It also boasts a top free camping site and bore baths with hot water direct from the Great Artesian Basin. Very nice on a cool winters day!

From Narrabri we explored the nearby Nandewar Ranges, the remnants of an ancient basaltic shield volcano, with Mt Kaputar being the highest point.

Red Wattlebird

Mt Kaputar- 1508 metres 

Australian Raven

One of the more spectacular sights was the forty metre high Sawn Rocks, a wall of pentagonal basalt pipes, the remains of a lava flow from the old volcano.

Sawn Rocks

Looking for raptors

The canola crops were flowering under the winter sun and made for a colourful foreground to the rugged ranges.

Nandewar Ranges

Cheers & Happy Birding

SOME LOCALS AND A LIFER.

I got a decent shot of a Pale-headed Rosella recently feeding on some seeding grass across the road.

We have a small group in the neighbourhood that sometimes visit our feeder.

Pale-headed Rosella

Another local has been tending his mound down the bottom of our backyard.

It's a massive construction he's prepared for the female to lay her eggs and that he continuously maintains to keep the temperature at 35 degrees for successful incubation. Big job but with his massive feet he's up to the task.  

   

Brush Turkey

This immature Blue-faced Honeyeater came in to hunt for insects around the cocos palm.

It won't get the striking blue facial skin of the adult until about 16 months old.

Blue-faced Honeyeater

The next picture isn't great but it's a record shot of a Sooty Owl, my first sighting of this elusive species after a tip off from a friend (thanks Russ!) who had found the bird roosting in a piccabeen palm in a local rainforest reserve.The view through my binos was better than this shot suggests, although it was a neck breaker and about 20 metres straight up.  

Sooty Owl

Below is an illustration of what a Sooty Owl should look like, courtesy of John Gould.