Cairns Escape - Final Chapter

Finally, I can bring this endless stream of delayed far north Queensland blog post to an end. It has taken way to much time, but I most admit that I have truly had a lot of joy going through the pictures again. Great holiday with lots of highlights and a few things we would probably change for our next trip, here is a little sum up of goods and bads.

Weather and timing could probably have been optimized. Early April is just considered end of the rainy season and you should know that sometimes the weather does not respect this rule. However, all the rain probably meant that we encountered less Easter shenanigans. We could always find accommodation, no problem booking a car and no queuing to see the Cassowary :-) Price wise, the plane tickets were Easter-price i.e. expensive, however, a bit of looking around and there are always airfare deals out there. Biggest economical setback was probably the need for a solid roof above our heads every night. Despite of having brought the tent, we simply could not use it due to the amount of water pouring down. In most of the exotic locations that meant prices well above $100 a night, In Cairns motels can easily be found around $60 per night.

Birding up north was absolutely fantastic! Tactically we followed the Pareto principle - litterally we split the 5 day holiday into 5 events (i.e. 20%); Daintree, Julatten, Atherton tablelands, South of Cairns, and the Great Barrier Reef. We used 20% of the time each place to see 80% of what the place had to offer :-) Due to this tactic little G. managed to clock up an impressive 57 new bird species:

1. Southern Cassowary
2. Orange-footed Scrubfowl
3. Plumed Whistling-Duck
4. Wandering Whistling-Duck
5. Brown Booby
6. Intermediate Egret
7. Cattle Egret
8. Great-billed Heron
9. Striated Heron
10. Black Bittern
11. Brahminy Kite
12. (Spotted Harrier)
13. Little Curlew
14. Great Knot
15. Grey-tailed Tattler
16. Terek Sandpiper
17. Common Sandpiper
18. Bush Stone-curlew
19. Lesser Sand Plover
20. Little Tern
21. Common Noddy
22. Black Noddy
23. Pied Imperial-Pigeon
24. Wompoo Fruit-Dove
25. Emerald Dove
26. Double-eyed Fig-Parrot
27. Gould’s Bronze-Cuckoo
28. Channel-billed Cuckoo
29. (Barn Owl)
30. White-rumped Swiftlet
31. Azure Kingfisher
32. Buff-breasted Paradise-Kingfisher
33. Forest Kingfisher
34. Blue-winged Kookaburra
35. Large-billed Scrubwren
36. Mountain Thornbill
37. Helmeted Friarbird
38. Macleay’s Honeyeater
39. Yellow-spotted Honeyeater
40. Graceful Honeyeater
41. Varied Honeyeater
42. Yellow Honeyeater
43. Mistletoebird
44. Yellow-bellied Sunbird
45. Chowchilla
46. Grey-headed Robin
47. Pale-yellow Robin
48. Little Shrike-thrush
49. Bower’s Shrike-thrush
50. Spectacled Monarch
51. Shining Flycatcher
52. Spangled Drongo
53. Varied Triller
54. Olive-backed Oriole
55. Figbird
56. White-breasted Woodswallow
57. Torresian Crow
58. Crimson Finch
59. Metallic Starling

I know there are 59 on the list, she had already seen the Barn Owl before (but it sort of deserve to be mentioned) and unfortunately she was very concentrated driving the little Toyota up a steep winding road when the Spotted Harrier took of next to us .. so it was only me that got a good look .. how sad! ;-)
No doubt that Julatten and Atherton tableland supplied most of the birding action, but I really would have been sad not to go south of Cairns to see the Cassowary or to take another day in the hinterland, but missing out on the reef. Cairns Esplanade deserves a mentioning, we used very little time there, probably less than 2 hours in total, but per minute no place delivered more new birds - an absolute must see for any binocular slinging birder.

Great Barrier Reef is a must go as well! No way around it - you have to dedicate at least a day for the reef, apart from some world class snorkeling it is a good way to get a bit out of town and to see something else .. including a few pelagic species, like two types of Noddys and a Booby. Tons of fish and good visibility, what more can you hope for? The snorkeling equipment supplied were excellent and with good flippers we both managed to do a bit of free diving, just to feel alive :-)

Good stuff, still dark and Jetstar brought us back to Sydney, I managed to arrive at work nearly normal morning time, still smelling of saltwater and full of energy.

The Great Barrier Reef - Hallelujah! :-)

After many years of snorkeling here in Australia, I finally made it to the Great Barrier Reef - the most famous diving and snorkeling destination in Australia - if not in the world?..! Not bad at all! :-) There is really no way around going to the reef while being in Cairns, every single street down town Cairns will have a good collection of (dive) shops advertising the possibility of taking you out to the reef on more or less anything that can float. From super fast luxury ships that will do the trip out to the reef so fast that you will hardly have time to get your stinger suit on and find a matching pair of flippers, to equally expensive wooden sailboats that will make the travel a part of the experience.

We went for the cost efficient compromise, about $100 per person (including $15 reef tax). That gave us medium travel speed, the trip took about 1h30m each way - excellent opportunity to see a few new pelagic species - and snorkeling at two destinations on Moore Reef. In between dives the trip even included a decent attempt of serving up lunch, all in all clocking up nearly a full day at the reef.

Finally we managed to have a bit of luck with the weather, it was not raining! Apparently we were also lucky with the amount of wind and surf, chatting a bit to some of the more experienced looking members of our fellow participants revealed that we had chosen the best day of the week for going to the reef. The last 3 days in particular had been quite rough, apparently culminating in nearly 100% of participants from the trip the day before having to "feed the fish" .. we quickly decided to buy the motion Sickness tablets.

The Great Barrier Reef is indeed quite "great" i.e. big, so when the ship stopped and it was announced that we had reach our first destination, I could not help having a funny feeling of is this really it? Yeah, well you could see a few boats in the distance, but otherwise there was nothing except water and eagerly gazing into the water revealed non of all the excitement that had given the reefs its reputation.


Before getting into the water we had to sit through a briefing with the captain of the ship, his first question surprised me a bit, but the reaction was even more confusing. He asked, "is there anyone that cannot swim?" and a couple of fellow snorkelers raised their hands!!..??

Such is the attractive powers of the Great Barrier Reef! Even tourists without swimming capabilities will volunteer, even pay money, to be ferried 1h30m away from the safety of solid land and be dumped into 20-30m deep water to see "the largest structure in the world to have been built by living creatures". Fantastic stuff and I take my hat off for those who decided that they needed a float, it takes a lot of courage to swim in deep waters, even for experienced (pool-)swimmers.

Getting into the water it all started to make sense. We were given direction to an underwater Atoll a good stone throw away from the ship. While swimming there there was nothing to see, but as we got closer you suddenly saw this enormous structure rise from deep below, a large nearly perfectly cylindrical reef probably 50m diameter with the top at a perfect 1m below the surface - perfect for just floating around in the surface looking at the thousands of fish darting around between the corals.


To be continued ..

Carins Esplanade - A Wader-watching Paradise

We did not have optimal weather! The panorama above should be proof of that, however, it did not matter much, since I cannot imagine it harmed the number of waders along the Cairns Esplanade. As usual the best way to see new birds is to change habitat! .. and since I have not done much around tropical mudflats in the past it proved very rewarding taking a stroll down the boardwalk in center of Cairns.

I wrote in the previous post that the boardwalk was very cleverly designed and I really mean that. It allows the visitor to get incredibly close without interfering with the action below. You cannot get onto the mudflats (and I cannot imagine why you should want to) and the birds have realized this, so they have developed a no-interest-attitude to what is going on up above on the boardwalk. This might also be partly due to the fact that the track is lifted up to a few meters above where the birds wandering around are searching for food.

Before we could even see water, we started seeing exciting birds. The trees were humming with Metallic Starlings and Varied Honeyeaters (both new to me) and you had to be careful not to step on one of the peaceful doves running around between your legs.

The southern end of the Esplanade gave excellent views of a good collection of egrets and herons. Photographically it was a bit of a challenge, an ever changing combination of rain, clouds, shadow and light made it hard, throw in the fact that we had arrived at absolute lowest tide, allowing the birds to stand furthest away from the boardwalk and you have yourself a challenge.

One of the reasons these Cairns posts have been so badly delayed is the time it has taken to actually identify what we managed to see :-D Waders are hard! - notice that I am not saying that they are harder than small birds in the deep dark Daintree rain forest - but boy is it hard when they are changing between breeding and non-breeding plumage, throw in the sexual dimorphism and I will have to admit that my Simpson & Day was just not sufficient to ID everything we saw. The Michael Morcombe book is better for waders, but there are still pictures of birds that I am not sure about so if any of you readers out there want to chip in, I can assure you that you are very welcome.


Most of the pictures in this post should however be sorted. It took a while to recognize the two Great Knots in the picture after the Terek Sandpiper down below. Also, not being super sharp with my waders, I was quite intrigued by the little colorful bird above the whimbrel, but trawling through the pictures it looks like a Red-necked Stint with a plumage somewhere between breeding and non-breeding .. I should probably have realized that much faster, since that is a frequent guest around Sydney.


The Grey-tailed Tattler was a bit of a headache as well, until I got hold of Michael Morcombe's field guide. My own book gave very few hints to how to distinguish the grey-tailed from the wandering only providing pictures of them in non-breeding coloration. Lesser Sand Plover below was much easier - a great little bird! All in all we spend a very rewarding hour or so wandering up and down the Esplanade before we started getting nervous about where we would be sleeping for the night.


Our plan had been to cover as much of Tropical North Queensland as possible and camp as we moved around, for the first day we had planned on making our way north to the Daintree river. Considering the weather we decided against the camping, it would simply be impossible to keep things dry - or to dry wet gear - in a wet tent, however, we still liked the idea of getting to Daintree River. That unfortunately also meant that we had to plan a bit ahead and sort out accommodation for the night. So despite of having super duper birding at the Cairns Esplanade we decided to fire up the rented car and push north .. weather would probably also be better up there!..???

Cairns - Easter Escape

Cairns for Easter, how good was that! :-) Easter had proven a bit of a challenge to arrange this year, I truly enjoy the road trip-camping combination type of holidaying, but at the same time there are a few hot spot locations in Australia that are not easily reached by land-based transport out of Sydney if you are restricted by the time frame of a long weekend - even taking into account the long-distance-superiority of the Magna. Cairns is one of those places - others are; Broome, Alice Springs and Tasmania, hopefully I will be able to report from a few of these places later during the year, but for now it will be about Cairns for a while.

Being a bit creative with the use of extra holidays we managed to get the needed flight tickets without having to donate blood or organs - just! Boy is Easter expensive(?). The result being that we managed to get 5 days in the Tropical North Queensland at the cost of only one additional holiday and a few dollars. In the wisdom of hindsight it could be argued that pushing that far north early April is like playing with water .. and it was, we probably had 4.5 days of good quality rain that would make any outback farmer dance around in happiness. We did not dance, but realized that with a few changes to the plan we could easily deal with it; no camping - the tent would never dry again, and be careful with your electronic gear, including camera and lenses. I was seriously afraid of how the camera would deal with such conditions, but at the same time it is just a tool and it only has value when being used. I can now happily state that it is still alive and that modern cameras can take much(!) much(!) more water than I would ever had expected before this trip! :-D Our only casualty was a mobile phone that did not like the continuous exposure to 100% humidity. The rain may have hurt us slightly when it comes to the amount of wildlife we saw, particular bird count. However, looking at the outcome of the trip it is probably to our benefit that we were slowed down slightly, otherwise it would have been seriously stressful having to tick all those species :-D Otherwise the rain was no problem, because as they say up there "it is warm rain" and in a weird way quite pleasant.

Arriving in Cairns little G. immediately fell in love with the most exciting fruit and vege market I have ever seen. Initially I desperately tried to argue the case of how much more "fruitful" it would be to spend more time at the Cairns Esplanade 200 meters further down the road, but in the end I had to give in and agree that they have some seriously fantastic fruits, which gave us lots of tasty treats throughout our little holiday.

Finally we made our way down to the Cairns Esplanade! Weather was not great, but who cares when you are at this very cleverly designed boardwalk, which allow you to wander along the water having scenic views of Cairns and the mountains and rain forest surrounding it, without disturbing the life of the mudflats happening a couple of meters below.

As you might already have guessed, we concentrated more on the mudflats down below than the scenic vistas :-D It was absolutely crawling with life. The mudskippers were doing fantastic acrobatic moves to attract the opposite sex .. and to fend of rivals. Best guess is that this species is part of the Periophthalmus family. I remember reading about mudskippers many years ago when I first started being interested in aquarium fish, fantastic animals that are truly amphibious, as long as they are wet they can breath through their skin(!) allowing them to access food sources unreachable to other fish. Arriving at the Esplanade at low tide also allowed us to see armies of mud crabs roaming around feeding on the dirt, but we were probably more impressed by the Fiddler crabs sitting slightly closer to the boardwalk displaying its enormous colorful claw.

As you might have noticed, I have not included a single bird picture. I will make up for that shortly by a full blog post dedicated to the feathered wildlife of the Cairns Esplanade - see you soon.