Atherton Tablelands - Part 3 - The Crater and Lake Eacham

The day was disappearing fast and our visit to the Atherton Tablelands was soon to end. Deciding to only use one day in this fantastic area was hard and it was truly tempting to stick around, but other places were on the list. If we had gone exclusively for the birds we would probably have taken a day more or two, Atherton Tablelands boast a bird list claiming an impressive 327 species of which 12 are local endemics i.e. those 12 species can only(!) be seen while scouting through the tablelands.

Before leaving we had a final few great spots to visit: Firstly we would visit The Crater in Mount Hypipamee National Park and secondly, Lake Eacham - one of the two lakes constituting the Crater Lakes National Park.

The Crater is an impressive volcanic formation called a volcanic pipe - I am no expert, but the internet comes in handy :-) - pressure from gasses generated at the molten lava rock underground have at some point become so large that they literally ripped the granite bed rock above apart, forming a chimney where trough the volcano could vent. The hole is nearly perfectly cylindrical with a diameter of 61m and a dept of more than 140m, the lower ca. 80 meter of the crater has over time been filled with water forming quite an impressive pool - could be a good spot for practicing your free-diving skills(?) ;-)

A small but good walk, a couple of minuets at the crater and an equal amount of time spend at the Dinner Falls and we were of to Lake Eacham. Both Lake Eacham and Lake Barrine in the Crater lakes National Park are old burned out volcanoes that after having been filled with water have created a couple of unique tableland lakes. Arriving at Lake Eacham we were quite birded out - the intense hunt for new feathered sightings had taken its toll and quite frankly we did not really care much about the bird count anymore :-D

Instead of trying to follow every little twitter we decided to do a good solid 4km walk around the lake. We had a lovely walk lots of chatting and very few pictures - not bad at all. A couple of resident water dragons [update; Great Boyd's forest dragons - credit to Jarrod] managed to display so impressively though that I could not resist charging the flash and getting a couple of photos.

A trip like our 5 day escape to far north Queensland generates an enormous amount of brochures readily available from tourist information offices, guides and motels etc. They often end up piled in the bottom of the car making it impossible to find the one you want. Of all the glossy paperwork we received, this folder was the most helpful finding our birding ways in the highlands - so if you are going north then why not bring an electronic copy - I bet someone out there will argue that a certain recent Apple product could prove helpful in such situations :-D

Looks like I will have to hope for the Helmeted Guineafowl becoming tick'able one day ;-)

Atherton Tablelands - Part 2 - Wongabel State Forest

Wongabel State Forest was next on our list. The Mabi forest include a 2.6km botanical walk where a total of 192(!!) species of trees are named. A habitat sporting such an enormous variety of plants should be a great place for all kinds of exciting birds(?) and a quick search on the internet reveals that Wongabel State Forest should indeed be the home to great birds including quite a few that I had not seen before, who would not like to spot a Tooth-billed Bowerbird, Victoria’s Riflebird, Spotted Catbird and maybe a Yellow-breasted Boatbill - the rumor even suggested that little G. could pick up a Rufous Owl if she was lucky.

Well, if luck is measured by the above listed birds, we had absolutely non of it! None of those famous residents decided to show - we saw quite a few LBBs (little brown birds) and of all the pictures taking during our trip, the set taking in Wongabel has by far been the most difficult to go through and do the identification.

Another setback was my battery situation, which made it impossible to follow my new found technique for getting usable pictures in dark rain forests - letting that flash rip in combo with the 150mm macro nearly wide open.


The walk was not exactly demanding, only 2.6km and exceptional flat. The entire exercise felt like walking through a humongous botanical garden with absolutely fantastic dense forest. We probably spend 2 hours so we can truly claim to have given a large part of the signs a read.

Birding was incredible difficult! Lots of stuff was happening, but getting a good look or, even harder, a photo of the small birds darting around in the dense undergrowth was truly stressful. After two hours of chasing LBBs around I must admit I was happy to get out in the open again.

I still got a few "mystery birds" from Wongabel - including the two below, please feel free to chip in :-)


Finally outside we dived into another serve of exotic fruit. If you ever find yourself driving around in the Atherton Tablelands I would recommend doing some regular stops at the farm sales along the road, there are some seriously good fruit and vegetable deals to be made; 6 avocados for $1 .. that beats the local supermarket here in Sydney! Just before leaving we managed to spot a few Chestnut-breasted Mannikins feeding along the road side - good to be out of the dark forest.

Atherton Tablelands - Part 1 - Hastie's Swamp National Park - Nyleta Wetlands

On the road again :-) We were aiming at covering as much of the Ahterton tableland as possible and following the same argument as I used for our Daintree National Park excursion, you could argue that the rain made it all easier - There was no way we could bring the little Toyota up the wet and muddy dirt road to Mount Lewis .. guess the Golden Bowerbird and the Blue-faced Parrot-Finch will have to wait for our next visit then ;-) Cutting out the mountain gave us more time down around Atherton and we managed to visit: Hastie's Swamp, Wongabel State Forest, Mount Hypipamee National Park and Lake Eacham in the Crater Lakes National Park.


Hastie's Swamp National Park aka Nyleta Wetlands probably had one of the best bird hides I have ever visited and with a bird list clocking up 220 species it was a bit of a surprise that I should find the best spot in the bathroom sink! :-D

Just as we arrived it started to drizzle, which is not exactly what you want when hunting for waterbirds. It definitely put a damper on the action and I dipped badly on the expected Cotton Pygmy-goose. My lovely companion on the other hand happily ticked both Plumed Whistling-Duck and Wandering Whistling-Duck. Quite a few swifts were flying around and they did not all look like the "usual" White-rumped Swiftlet that we had seen up around the Daintree. However, I did not manage to get sufficient photographic evidence to make a qualified stab at what it was.

All good, we had a little lunch at the bird hide and decided to push on to the neighboring Wongabel State Forest.

Kingfisher Park - Morning Birding

It is enormously stressful being on holiday, but so very rewarding! :-D Getting up early next morning realizing that we would have to leave Kingfisher Park before lunchtime, we made sure to take 100% advantage of the time we had.

Sitting on the porch scoffing my breakfast while ticking an Emerald Dove passing by, was a fantastic start to the day - guess it was anticipating that some of all that muesli would not hit the spot at the excessive speed I was eating at. Little G. managed to outscore me with about 100%, also having to pull out the pen for a very curious Blue-faced Honeyeater.

After breakfast, we got the boots on and started our last round of the property. Bird-wise the equivalent of letting two kids run wild in a candy store! :-) Absolutely fantastic stuff, new birds everywhere - you nearly got dizzy spinning around trying to follow that unknown bird flying pass or looking after what bush that weird call came from. Spectacled Monarch above and Pale-yellow Robin (race nana) below.


Both little Shrike-thrush and Bower's Shrike-thrush were running around and Yellow Honeyeater decided to show. While all of this were going on I realized that I was in trouble - all the flash shooting the night before and what I had done in the Daintree rain forest had eaten away 60% of my battery life, there was still 3 days left .. and I had left my charger home in Sydney! I simply had to reduce the use of the flash, which was a bit of a disaster! Flash is the best (and only?) way to get good pictures in dark places.


Great guns! We clocked up nearly 3 hours of hardcore birding, including nearly 45 min of intensive stalking of a Noisy Pitta - which we heard multiple times, but never saw!

Got the little Toyota packed, made a final visit to the feeder and we were on the road again. This particular morning we indeed felt blessed not only had we had a fantastic birding morning, but also the weather seemed to smile at us .. for a couple of hours until it started raining again with a vengeance! :-D

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.