Bowra Station - Afternoon Birdwatching - Hall's Babbler

Back at camp and the bird keen caretakers generously offered to help out those of us less well equipped with some 4WD assistance. Aim of the afternoons trip was Hall's Babbler, but as always, when you have a chance of spending some time with experienced birders with local knowledge, you are likely to see much more than you hoped for :-) This lovely afternoon at Bowra I was in excellent company with some lovely people and some seriously good bird eyes!

First rarity of the day was Chestnut-breasted Quail-thrush, another bird where my photos unfortunately does not do it justice. These beauties will dart between cover made up of small bushes or grass and it takes a lot of patience to get in close. I saw Chestnut-breasted Quail-thrush during my trip to Gundabooka National Park, but it is a bird I will happily spend time chasing down everyday and it was good to at least get a few adjoining pixels for the blog.


Next - and the target of our afternoon excursion - was Hall's Babbler. Once again patience and local knowledge was key and after 20 min of searching through the habitat our efforts where rewarded with a little family of Hall's Babblers jumping around not understanding what the fuss was about.


Great bird! I really enjoy seeing babblers in general, they are exciting opportunistic birds and it seems that there is always something going on around them. The sun moves fast in the outback and it was time to head back to the homestead. Walking back to the cars we noticed a clay nest with at least 3 inhabitants. My guess is that it is an Apostlebird nest.


Back at the homestead it was getting dark, under these difficult conditions I surprisingly managed to get a decent photo of a Diamond Dove. All day I had tried, but despite of having all the light you can possibly hope for, I could not get that red eye sharp ... It is obviously a lens problem ;-)

What a day! Full speed from first light and not a dull moment. I was knackered and hungry and was seriously considering just getting some food in my belly and allow myself a monster sleep .. as soon as the darkness fell, the frogs started their nightly serenade and I knew I had to give the macro lens a little workout before giving myself some rest - but that is another story :-)

Bowra Station - Morning Bird Walk

What a great morning! :-) The nightly chorus of the frogs had ceased and instead replaced with an equally impressive mix of weird and wonderful bird calls. In the hot parts of Australia mornings are by far the best time of the day to spot those feathered noise makers and I was out of bed in a flash ready to start exploring.

The south-western end of Queensland is far enough away from the usual habitats around Sydney to give you that feeling of everything being different. Of course there are birds and plants that you can also find around Sydney, but when the doves are diamond, the friarbirds are little and the bellbirds are crested, you know that you are away from home.

During dinner the night before a couple of the caretakers at Bowra had promised to take the newly arrived for a morning walk along the bore drain, a White-winged Fairy-wren had been spotted in a particular bush a little walk away from the homestead, and considering the size of Bowra - and the amount of bushes! - it was an offer too good to refuse to be guided to the right bush :-)

The birding was absolutely fantastic and in the first 500 meters of walking I managed to see four(!) new birds plus I got photos of a few species that I have not managed to digitize before. The early new ones were White-necked Heron, which I for some reason have managed to avoid seeing even though it should be possible to pick it up much closer to Sydney. As hinted earlier, I also managed an encounter with a few Diamond Doves pottering around outside the homestead. Another bird that I had not seen before and that seemed to be attracted to the presence of humans at the homestead was Spotted Bowerbird and finally we got good views of the promised White-winged Fairy-wren, what a great little bird - sadly my photo does not do it justice.


The water at Bowra is artesian water and originates from the Great Artesian Basin an enourmous water source underlying 23% of Australia. It is the largest and deepest known source of artesian water in the world, and absolutely crucial for the sustainability of life in some of the driest parts of outback Australia. All that water had attracted a few birds that I had not expected to see that far outback - Black-winged Stilt, and what about a Nankeen Night Heron in the desert?


Bowra used to be a cattle station, and to maximize the possibility for the cattle to get to water a many kilometer long drainage ditch brings life giving water out onto the property. Birds as well as cattle needs to drink once and a while making the bore drain walk some of the best birding anyone can imagine.


We had a fantastic one and a half hours stroll that morning. Super company and some very special nature - what more can you hope for.?..! As we passed the campsite where I would later pitch my tent, we encountered a family of Chestnut-crowned Babbler. Babblers are great opportunistic birds and have some of the most interesting social behavior I have seen for any bird. The Chestnut-crowned Babbler is a great find, but I had seen it before and it was not the babbler I was after. The bird that has arguably added the most to the fame of Bowra is a constant presence of the rarest Babbler of them all: Hall's Babbler - A bird I would be targeting later that day :-)

A last surprise from our morning walk was a Buff-banded Rail walking around in the tall grass next to the little lake. This bird have never been seen at Bowra Station before and I guess we were all quite proud of having helped making a stunningly impressive bird list swell even a little more :-)