Orange-footed and Swallowtailed

Today's surprise visitor at the Azure Kingfisher tunnel site is ... an Orange-footed Scrubfowl (Megapodius reinwardt). The birds are solid fliers but prefer to walk, even clumsily across an obstructed natural bridge such as above (20 metres east of my sitting place on the bank).
Sorry about the picture, but everything smaller that came closer darted away again just as quickly - and even I seldom ever see Scrubfowls. Of Azures, nothing!

Bit of high-speed (and noisy) photography slowed down the wings of this female Orchard Swallowtail (Papilio aegeus) on dreaded Lantana (which sadly won't top present voting for best Australian movie).

Two other butterflies met all the time are Chocolate (Junonia hedonia) and Meadow (J. villida) Arguses. Both females (I think). Chocolate's a bit worse for wear. Meadows are one of the obliging types that stay open-winged on alighting.

Honeyeaters' nest lays an egg

Brown-backed Honeyeaters (Ramsayornis modestus) flourish in Tyto in spite of many nesting failures. They usually build their bulky, dangling, domed-entry nests lowish over water and away from prying eyes (that's us, folks!).

Their caution doesn't stop other honeyeaters from stealing from the mass of nesting material. It does make the nests more difficult to find than their size would indicate.

The bird pictured and its mate have chosen as bad a site as could be imagined. Smack in front of the bird hide, high off the dry ground, and in an area teeming with tree snakes (three or four live in the hide roof!) and the odd passing vandal. Any chance of a happy outcome? Not one.

They should have asked the Yellow Honeyeaters that built and abandoned a much smaller nest tucked secretly within the same branch system what life near a hide was like. 'Too much for us,' would have been the reply. 'We couldn't stand all the noise and movement. Couldn't shift quickly enough!'

Or quizzed the Willie Wagtail sitting on a neat cup nest slightly above human eyes looking out of the hide to the southwest. 'We love it here,' she'd say. 'We got cheesed off with vandals destroying the nests we built inside the hide. But this is perfect.'

Or tried to find the Red-browed Finches that reared the usual big family in the top of the tree. So cunning were the parents, they'd fly in to one tree and dart across it into the nest tree. Almost totally unseen and all high out of harm's way.

I'll let things play out without stepping in as I'm sure the Brown-backeds will soon realise their mistake. After vandals twice destroyed nests of Willies sitting on eggs I began removing all material as soon as building began. The birds took the hint and have since reared young in two of the three trees around the hide.

Elsewhere today, brief sighting of female and probable male Lovely Fairy-Wren (not far from abandoned nest), another sighting of pale Horsfield's Bronze-Cuckoo seen last week being ignored by a Red-backed Fairy-Wren, today fed by three wrens, and fleeting fly-bys from the Azure Kingfisher (seemingly too busy to stop at the nest tunnel - which may as yet be more tunnel than nest).

Watching and monitoring ...

Sat waiting without luck for some action at the Azure Kingfisher nest tunnel in the rainforest creek bank today but found something much bigger crunching around in the leaf litter.

Don't see many Lace Monitors near Ingham and certainly nothing near the 1.2-metre size of today's wary big guy. Too wary for me, anyway. Couldn't get close enough for any sort of picture.

So I'll throw in a shot of a smaller monitor I photographed a few weeks back on the other side of the rainforest.

And I'll spare you yet another lovely Red-bellied Black Snake I'd hoped to sneak right up on. Didn't get close enough for the super closeup!

But did manage to tiptoe towards a juvenile Brown Cuckoo-Dove (Macropygia amboinensis). The bird untypically chose a low branch on the edge of the rainforest. Must confess to not having in the past noticed the full attractiveness of the scalloped juvenile plumage.

Less lucky inside the rainforest. Chased in after a Noisy Pitta (Pitta versicolor). And saw at an obscured distance two birds whose paths crossed atop a fallen tree (Pittas often hop along fallen timber). Result? Two gloriously coloured blurs of bluey-greens toned with orangey-reds. In the bin!

Rounded off the increasingly sunny day with a quick loop through Tyto and a brief interlude with a Golden-headed Cisticola (Cisticola exilis).

All the Hardheads, the two Glossy Ibises and many other waterbirds have gone from the main lagoon following the recent run of night showers and rain. Seems the national Little Bittern survey transect I'd notionally mapped out will be more waterlogged than I'd expected.

Birds in my face, under my feet

Female Rufous Whistler (Pachycephala rufiventris) flew so close to me I'd have missed this picture with other than my 28-300mm Tamron macro. Since I have no other lens, I got a picture.

Target until the whistler turned up was a juvenile Mistletoebird (Dicaeum hirundinaceum). The bird's feeding added to the colour of its vivid gape. But it stayed just out of range and light enough for a good shot.

No success with the camera at my favourite rainforest creek either. However, after joking earlier about taking years to find an Azure Kingfisher's dirt-tunnel nest, a bird popped out right under my nose (or feet) today.

Where was it? Two metres from where I watched and shot Large-billed Gerygones building their long dangling nest over the centre of a creek pool!

Over more than four weeks and at least 20 visits to the site - and many sightings of Azures - I saw no behaviour to suggest a pair of the birds had a nest virtually beneath my feet.

The water level has risen more than 600mm after recent rain. There's no easy crossing to the opposite bank. The tunnel entrance will be in shadow, severely backlit for much of the day, and eight metres off - too far for my in-camera flash.

But a bit of sit and watch is obviously called for. Keep you posted.

Two's porny, three's allowed!

Just to show how grownup I can be, here's Lyophyllum connatum as a threesome and not the prurient pairing commonly seen, in nature - and elsewhere. Though the field guide talks of dense clumps and colonies, two or three caps growing from the grassiest of tracks is the Tyto norm.

In my eagerness to post Little Bittern pictures yesterday I neglected to include other details from the sighting.

Also close by was a Red-backed Fairy-Wren ferrying insects to a regular nesting area. The wren's disguised approach to the nest made more noise on the Scleria than the bittern.

So did a pair of Crimson Finches bouncing on the stems before taking nesting material to a hole in a paperbark. Even noisier was the rustling about of an Australian Reed Warbler.

Yet eight metres from me a relatively huge bird shifted around with little noise at all. It may be that the birds are more active feeders during the day than has been recognised. It's almost impossible to see them and now I find their secretiveness is much enhanced by quiet movement.

Missed out everywhere else on the rounds today. Shining Flycatchers, Azure Kingfishers and Large-Billed Gerygones made shadowy appearances and vanished. All the glorious leaves tiling the rainforest creek surface were scattered by overnight wind. I've declared the Lovely Fairy-Wren nest a lost cause, and am having doubts about my cuckoo thief theory.

Kingfishers' king fishers

PLENTY of Australians live to fish, far fewer fish to live. Number among the latter, the Little Kingfisher, world's smallest. At 11-13cm it's barely more than half the size of the 'standard' Forest and Sacred species. And it is dwarfed by the Laughing Kookaburra (41-47cm) and the Blue-winged Kookaburra (38-40cm), which are giant kingfishers - and among a rare few Australian bird species to retain an Aboriginal name.

A Little Kingfisher (Alcedo pusilla) shares a branch with a White-lipped Green Tree Frog, a bird eater (see earlier post), but not usually a threat to an alert mature bird.

Most of Australia's 10 kingfisher species would as soon pounce on ground prey as dive into water for fish. A second exception to such preference is the Azure Kingfisher (Alcedo azurea), pictured in a so-so photo saved by a shaft of light.