Kingfisher Park - Night Spotting - Miscellaneous

Bush Stone-curlews, a few owls and an army of frogs - that makes great numbers for any night spotting adventure. However, there were still a few goodies to be caught by those spotlights. The little bentwing bat above was a fantastic spot, hanging onto the tiniest crack in one of the bathroom doors at the deserted (and flooded) campsite it looked so peaceful just hanging there sleeping that I only reluctantly decided to use the flash. I stopped the flash output down 2 stops and the photo is taken from a fair distance. It is actually possible to identify the closed eye, the snout and some seriously good sized ears if you examine the photo closely.

The stopping down of the flash was very appropriate for the bat, probably because of the distance. However, always remember to reset your camera after fooling around with settings - in particular after using the timer function!! ;-) - While shooting the bat I got onto the wolf spider below .. the lighting seems to be more appropriate for a bit of boudoir action .. it nearly makes it look cuddly :-D

Gehyra Dubia above had me fooled for a while. I saw its cousin, the Northern Dtellas Gehyra australis when I was in Kakadu and did not notice much of a difference, but a quick look in the reptile book revealed that they each roam in their own parts of Australia .. in particular they like the safety of human constructions - based on my sightings 100% of them run around up-side-down on the ceiling inside toilet blocks.

I think, I wrongfully claimed that the bird sighting had finished for the night(?) Making it back to the establishment, we saw a few Macleay's Honeyeaters curled up for the night - what a sight! They had assumed the disguise of fur balls .. and if it was not because we were told I guess identification would have been troublesome :-D

Fantastic stuff! Nearly 2 hours of spot lighting and we had seen an amazing selection of what moves during night in the far north end of Queensland. We decided to just quietly sit and enjoy the evening and see, what would be attracted by the feeders installed around Kingfisher Park. Before we had to give up and go to bed, we had seen Bush Rats, Fawn-footed Melomys, Northern Brown Bandicoots and a glimpse or two of the clearly distinguishable White-tailed Rat.

Kingfisher Park - Nightly Frog Bonanza

During my time here in Australia I have seen very few frogs! I have seen many more snakes than frogs .. or at least that was the case until we went on our nightly Kingfisher Park adventure. You could argue that constant rain for a few weeks should give optimal conditions for the small jumpy wet-loving creatures .. and it is a argument the frogs seemed to agree with.

Once again it was absolutely fantastic having "local" guides along, knowledge of where to look and what to listen for comes in exceptional handy when on the hunt for some night pictures. It surprised me how much of the shenanigans we found up high in trees and bushes - guess the naming, i.e. xxx Tree frog, should have been a give away ;-) and the logic probably follows an argument like, if everything is wet you can just as well get away from the predator patrolled ground and have a blast in the top of a palm tree.

As is evident from the amount of pictures - and I promise you that there are more - I had quite a few willing(?) models to practice with and I am actually very happy with the outcome of the exercise. I changed the settings of the camera slightly compared to first time I tried this type of semi-macro night shooting down in Kosciuszko National Park.

The procedure is now to force a faster flash sync speed, I use manual mode and a shutter speed somewhere between 1/160s and 1/250s to ensure that I get no motion blur, the D300 should be able to handle as fast as 1/320s, but for still sitting frogs with the 150mm it should not be needed. If you are trying this yourself, then remember to check how fast you can go and still sync your flash, google is your friend .. or give in and read the manual :-D The closer you get the more light the flash will give you! That is seriously good news, since the closer you get the shallower is your dept of field. This means that if you get in close with the flash you have enough light to close down that aperture and get more of the subject into focus. Shooting at around f/4.0 - f/4.5 I could keep an ISO setting of around 640 and still have enough light for that photon hungry sensor, not bad at all. It all sounds like I knew what I was doing, but do not worry it was all a strike of luck! :-D I was just lucky getting a usable combination of settings early on.

I am in no way a frog expert and while taking the photos I was already grueling over the trouble I would have to go through, trying to find a list of names matching what was displayed. Luckily the Kingfisher Park blog has helped me out by listing most of what we saw. With no certainty at all I will suggest that it looks like a Northern Dwarf Tree Frog in photo 3 and 4. First picture could be a Dainty Green Tree Frog and the last two pictures could be the Jungguy Frog. That leaves only the second picture ... Desert Tree Frog maybe? As always, any suggestions are welcome.

Kingfisher Park - Julatten - Birding in Topgear :-)

We arrived at Kingfisher Park birdwathers lodge late! There was probably less than one hour of daylight left, but we still managed to squeeze in quite a bit of excitement the first day!

Kingfisher Park is one of those near mythical bird spotting places, it boasts a bird list rivaled by very few places in Australia and maybe more importantly, many of the birds on that list are absolute stunners! The place is all about nature, it covers about 12 acres of grounds which works as a sanctuary for frogs, mammals, reptiles, birds .. and campers - you will not be the only one carrying a pair of binoculars! Keith and Lindsay Fisher, who runs the place, also have a blog with weekly updates on what has been seen in the area - follow the link here.

Before we stopped the car Gemma had already seen her first new bird - Orange-footed Scrubfowl - and before we had paid the room, I had clocked up 3 new species - Macleay's Honeyeater was all over the place! Leaving the packs in the room we set out for a super fast little tour of the property before night fall. Literally 20 meters from our front door we dived into the darkness of the forest and instantly we had our first ever glimpse of the Buff-breasted Paradise-Kingfisher - What an absolutely fantastic bird! It flies like a flash of super bright colors through the dark forest and you are instantly aware that this is something very special.

It soon got too dark for wandering around alone and we retreated to our rented accommodation. We once again had to leave the tent unused, not only was it still raining, but the campsite had been declared unfit for use .. it resembled a swimming pool. A good solid serve of gnocchi and we were ready for what the night would bring - We had signed up for a Kingfisher Park night spotting tour.

All in all we were 5 night spotters heading out into the night for a bit of excitement. The tropics are so very much alive and it seemed the rain had just enhanced the presence of life around us. First stop was to secure an owl, which was easily done - at one point we had views of not one, but two barn owls sitting up high seemingly considering if it was worth the effort getting out there in the rain for a bit of hunting. A popular topic on the nightly walks around Kingfisher Park is apparently the difference between Masked and Barn Owl. According to our guides all of the owls in the pictures below are the Barn variety.

Unfortunately there was no Sooty Owl around, but we were quite happy to see a little group of Bush Stone-curlews .. if it was not for the puddle of water we were standing in, I think G. would have performed a little dance :-D In an attempt of getting a bloggable picture I actually managed to flood my boots, so you will have to do with another owl.

No more birds were seen that night, but lots of other stuff, so I will return shortly with a frog or two and a few mammals .. to be continued.