Oh my - - doesn’t time fly!!
Apologies for being remiss with the Daintree Birdwatching blog. Lots of excuses, but none are good enough!
We’ve had fabulous weather here in Daintree over July and August. Cold (for us) nights and gorgeous days. Very little rain though, which we need.
The season is suddenly changing as a raft of our ‘summer’ migrants have arrived from New Guinea in just the last couple of days.
Brown-backed Honeyeater, Eastern Koel, Metallic Starling and Pied Imperial Pigeon have all been seen in Daintree in the last two days. A real sign of Spring.
Female Eastern Koel Fred Forsell
Other signs of impending Spring, of course, are frisky birds. The Mistletoebird is brightly coloured and calling madly. The Olive-backed Sunbirds are back and forth building a nest at the top of the stairs at Red Mill House. The Wompoo Fruit-Doves are calling and our Scrubfowl are busily tending their mound in anticipation (I’m guessing!).
Male Mistletoebird Lee Hunt
The oddities keep coming - our Female Red-backed Kingfisher still reliably sits on the power lines at the edge of town, an Australian Grebe seems to have made his home on the Daintree River, Little Friarbird and Blue-faced Honeyeater, which normally live in drier country, are both feeding on blossoms in town.
It has been a great couple of months.
TODAY - we head off to the UK for the British Birdfair. For several years now, Andrew and Trish have been organising the Australian Birdwatching stand at Birdfair and have a great time. The only problem is - in fact two problems - - first of all we only have 6 nights in the UK, so spend almost as much time travelling as what we have there, but secondly, every year we struggle getting funding to help with the costs. Tourism Tropical North Queensland have been fabulous this year but that funding has run out. So next year- who knows?? We believe it should be Tourism Australia’s role, but they don’t see the value of birdwatching - go figure!!
