Dispatches 24.3 ~ MEGA in Brisbane
It was time for another trip out to the Barakula Plains… the same site as last time. Consequently, there was little worry apart from the fear of the punishing survey schedule and the cold. The first morning we were out in the paddock it was a pearly 2ºC. Nasty. As usual, the remnant woodlands supported a really nice mix of inland birds like Chestnut-rumped and Inland Thornbills, plus friends of the blog like Speckled Warbler and Spotted Harrier. The days drifted past pleasantly enough, without any real highlights beyond continued sightings of super snails and a pair of Black Falcons terrorising the hoi polloi every day. A few nice togging opportunities did present themselves – Greater Bluebonnets in particular were nice to see, and El Bustardo was regal as always.
Unfortunately for my field companion, the future Greens Mayor of Brisbane, he was taken ill on the penultimate day of the survey. This meant that for the last two days of the survey I was piloting the Millennium Falcon, which I enjoyed! PEBR was a great offsider – we had many varied conversations – but being in the field by myself took me back to the PhD days. The last day of the survey in particular was lovely – I moved back and forth between two massive remnant Brachychiton rupestris, slowly rotating around them all day to stay in the shade. Watching the sky and the breeze in the grass was very pleasant… it was essentially a constant mindfulness meditation.
There was only one ‘problem’. Legendary SEQ patch birder, dear friend, mentor and fellow Plains inhabitant Andrew Jensen had found a dream bird on his patch the day before. In horrific conditions, Andy went to check the waders at the Gregory Road claypan and instantaneously identified a HUDSONIAN GODWIT. Andy’s patch dedication has paid off multiple times in the last couple of years, with some truly staggering birds (AUBI, anyone?) but this must have felt fantastic for him. He has specifically been looking for Hudwit for years!
A steady stream of excited messages from my friends trickled through over the last two days of the field trip as, one by one, they all connected with the ULTRA. I made the trip back to BNE in a slightly stressed out state but the tides did not suit going immediately after my arrival home. The next day I spent about 6 hours looking for the blighter with no success, from low tide until high tide… barely any birds had shown up at Gregory on the peak of high tide, so I eventually bailed to check the sandbar in the mouth of the Pine River as advised by the northside EIC members. There were quite a few shorebirds roosting here – it seemed like the tide wasn’t high enough to push them back to Gregory – but the light was truly awful and they were pretty distant. I ended up getting very poor (non-tickable) views of a good candidate roosting with ~50 other godwits on the sandbar, which gave me a little hope for the morrow The tide was shifting earlier in the day, so the next morning I went straight back and nailed the little sucker in the same place. Epic! It was a state tick and basically a FFQ so I was pretty stoked.
The following weekend I took J and my parents out to Gregory to have a look at the beast. This ended up being a successful mission as well, so Andy’s accrued birding karma continues to grow… thanks Andy 🙂
If I end up connecting with the Hudwit on the Brighton flats and get some better pictures, I’ll update this post ron.
Thanks for reading!
