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.