Birds of Vernon and the North Okanagan - Birds Around Feeders.

Birds of Vernon and the North Okanagan - Birds around Feeders by Chris Siddle (8 October 2016).

Male breeding plumaged American Goldfinch

Mallard – The quintessential park duck may drop in, especially if you have a swimming pool and scatter feed around, or if you live next to a lake.

California Quail – A charming addition to any backyard unless you’re worried about your flowerbeds, for quail do like to dig dusting holes. Try putting plastic or cloth on the exposed earth around your favourite plants.

Ring-necked Pheasant – If you live near orchards, fields with a brushy edge or a marsh pheasants may visit especially in harsh winter weather. Originally imported from England and China, the first pheasants, native to Asia, were introduced to Osoyoos in 1911 and by 1942 had become common in the North Okanagan. Presently numbers are much restricted by human development.

Great Blue Heron – Only if you have a pond with fish. Since the mid 1980’s Vernon’s herons have been locally well known for nesting in a tiny stand of cottonwoods along 24 Street north of 48 Avenue. As adult birds fly over the city heading to fishing grounds at Swan, Goose, Okanagan and Kalamalka lakes, they are quick to notice ponds along their routes. Netting over the pond will keep them away.

Turkey Vulture – If you’re partial to sun-bathing for long periods of time, a Turkey Vulture may fly over but not to worry, the Turkey Vulture depends upon its keen sense of smell to detect carrion worth investigating closely, so unless you have a serious personal hygiene problem you’re probably safe. Doesn’t take living prey.

Sharp-shinned Hawk – There are three accipiters – “bird hawks” – in North America that have evolved to ambush other birds by picking them off even around thick brush. The Sharp-shin is the smallest of the three and specializes in hunting sparrow-sized birds not only around open edges but even in thickets and woodlands. When they are immature, Sharp-shins, like their two relatives, the crow-sized Cooper’s Hawk and the even larger Northern Goshawk, have yellow eyes that seem to pierce right through the observer. As they mature , accipiters eyes turn ruby red, appropriate for a born killer. Frequent in Vernon backyards.

Sharp-shinned Hawk

Cooper’s Hawk – The medium-sized accipiter (see above) that can catch birds are large as California Quail. Frequent in Vernon backyards.

A Cooper's Hawk carefully watches the yard. 

Red-tailed Hawk – This is the large, bulky hawk seen around fields and on fence and utility poles around the North Okanagan. Although it is much more common that either the Sharp-shinned or the Cooper’s hawk, the Red-tailed Hawk is shy of people on foot and rarely visits normal sized backyards. It will take other birds but most of its diet consists of voles and mice.

Red-tailed Hawk

Rock Pigeon – This is the common street pigeon of big cities. Feral, the Rock Pigeon (formerly Rock Dove) may drop into urban feeders.

Eurasian Collared Dove – This native of the Old World was introduced to Bermuda in the 1970s and has since explosively expanded its range across the United States and southern Canada. It is currently increasing by leaps and bounds across the North Okanagan and is liable to turn up anywhere.

Eurasian Collared Dove - the latest alien avian invader. 

Mourning Dove – Our native dove most common in summer but small numbers winter locally. Note the long, pointed tail which easily distinguishes the Mourning Dove from the slightly bigger Eurasian Collared Doves. Named for the sad quality of its "song".

Northern Pygmy-Owl – This tiny owl can be recognized by its round shape and long, stiff tail jutting out from its body at a 45 degree angle. Most common in small numbers in winter, the diurnal Northern Pygmy-Owl will prey upon birds as well as rodents attracted to feeders.

Northern Pygmy Owl with prey (House Sparrow)

Black-chinned Hummingbird – In good light the male show a narrow electric blue band at the base of his black throat. Breeding summer visitor from mid May to mid August.

Anna’s Hummingbird – Every now and then one hears of a hummingbird frequenting a feeder during fall or winter. This is the Anna’s Hummingbird, a year-round resident in Vancouver and Victoria that is currently trying to establish populations in the Okanagan. When one shows up at a feeder, it becomes dependent upon humans to keep the sugar water solution above freezing.

Rufous Hummingbird – This, and the next species, are the two most common hummingbird. Males are light brown with throats that can show orange, red or even black under certain light conditions. Males will vigourously defend all feeders within its line of sight against other hummingbirds. Late April to early September.

Calliope Hummingbird – The smallest bird in Canada, the male Calliope has a gorget (showy throat feathers) of purple lines.

A male Calliope Hummingbird guards his territory near Goose Lake.

Red-naped Sapsucker – This woodpecker pecks tiny circular holes in the bark of trees, often birches, and laps the leaking sap with a specially adapted brushy tongue. Most trees survive a sapsucker’s visits. Summer resident from mid April – mid Sept.

Downy Woodpecker – A common visitor to suet feeders, though most people seldom get more than one or two visiting at any one time.

Downy Woodpecker

Hairy Woodpecker – A larger version of the Downy Woodpecker, the Hairy is found in heavily wooded areas but in severe weather will visit feeders in open locations.

Hairy Woodpecker

Northern (Red-shafted) Flicker – One of the most common birds in the Okanagan, the flicker sometimes taps on your siding and if you’re really unlucky, will drill a hole through the outer wall. Fortunately it much prefers to nest in snags. Woodpeckers don’t sing to advertise their territory; they peck out a rapid series of beats against any resonating surface. This is called drumming.

Merlin – A small falcon that often eats songbirds, the Merlin has adapted to using old crow nests in suburban areas like cemeteries. If a tiny bird zooms through your yard like a miniature jet fighter after the birds at your feeder, you’ve probably just been visited by a Merlin.

Steller’s Jay – Our provincial bird, often mislabeled the Blue Jay, the Steller’s Jay is deep blue with a black head and white eyebrows. It’s call is a loud shucka-shucka-shunka. Resident in small numbers. Quite local: occurs in some areas but not others.

Steller's Jay

Black-billed Magpie – A very familiar resident.

Black-billed Magpie

Black-capped Chickadee – A very popular bird. the chickadee is a common feeder bird, preferring sunflower seeds and suet.

The familiar Black-capped Chickadee. 

Mountain Chickadee – Very much like the Black-capped, but has a narrow white eyebrow and a rougher voice. Prefers Ponderosa Pine and Douglas-fir dominated woodlands compared to the Black-caps preference for deciduous and mixed woods.

Red-breasted Nuthatch – A common feeder bird, the nuthatch habitually hides sunflower seeds wherever it can find a crack or crevice in bark or even in conifer cones.

Red-breasted Nuthatch

White-breasted Nuthatch – If you live among Ponderosa Pines, you might find this larger nuthatch though it is the least common of the North Okanagan’s three nuthatches.

Pygmy Nuthatch – The smallest of the nuthatches, the Pygmy has a brown crown instead of black, and is strongly associated with Ponderosa Pines and adjacent cottonwoods.

European Starling – If you put out suet in winter it won’t be long before a starling samples it. However, unless the weather is particularly harsh, starlings prefer to find their own food.

European Starling feeds its chicks.

Bohemian Waxwing – These are the sleek brown-gray crested birds that seek out Mt. Ash trees for their berries in winter and are a common sight in dense flocks around Vernon.

A Bohemian Waxwing feeding on Mountain Ash berries.

Spotted Towhee – The male is a rather showy large sparrow with black upperparts, rufous sides and a white belly. Most frequent at feeders in April-May and Sept.-Oct. with a few overwintering around the valley bottom.

Male Spotted Towhee

Chipping Sparrow – a slim and delicate sparrow with a chestnut cap and a dark line through the eye, the Chipping Sparrow likes to nest in coniferous trees and bushes in our yards.

Adult Chipping Sparrow looks a little worn after raising 4-5 nesting. 

Song Sparrow – A dark brown or rusty brown sparrow common in singles or doubles at many a North Okanagan feeder. Has a characteristic hollow sounding call note and in flight appears to pump its tail. Resident, increasing in numbers in numbers in winter.

Song Sparrow 

Lincoln’s Sparrow – A slightly smaller, more delicate relative of the Song Sparrow, Lincoln’s Sparrows appear on migration most frequently during September.

Lincoln's Sparrow

White-throated Sparrow – Formerly quite a rare transient and winter resident, the White-throat has become quite a frequent visitor from late September through early October. Occasionally one overwinters.

Harris’s Sparrow – A rare transient or winter visitor usually seen in immature plumage. Do not confuse the adult with the much more common male House Sparrow.

White-crowned Sparrow – in late April and earliest May White-crowned Sparrows with their characteristics black and white striped crowns can be abundant. Re-appearing in September, the black and white crowned adult are not as common as brown and white crowned immatures. A few overwinter in favoured locations.

Golden-crowned Sparrow – A rare spring and autumn transient, usually found among White-crowned Sparrows.

Dark-eyed Junco – Once known as the Oregon Junco, most adult male Dark-eyed Juncos wear a black hood , have a brown back and the flashing white outer tail feathers. A few males are dark gray instead of black-hooded. These belong to a slightly different subspecies, and in the past were called Slate-coloured Juncos. Juncos start to appear in the valley bottom in late September and overwinter commonly. As spring advances, our local Oregons head into the surrounding  mountain forests to nest.

Female Dark-eyed Junco - males have black hoods

Red-winged Blackbird – Liable to visit as individuals at any time of year, Red-winged Blackbirds most often visit in force during harsh winter weather. Female, which are smaller and much more sparrow-like in plumage pattern, are east to spot among the black or blackish males.

 

Yellow-headed Blackbird – Sometimes in unusually bad weather during early spring the occasional Yellow-headed Blackbird may show up among the Red-winged Blackbirds.

Brewer’s Blackbird – The male is the shiny blackbird with the white eye. The female is brown with a dark eye. These blackbirds favour certain sites, like roadside cedar hedges, and if a feeder happens to be in the neighbourhood, they will be regular customers throughout the breeding season. Winters but only locally at feedlots.

Pine Grosbeak – A quiet fairly drab plump winter visitor. Usually found in small flocks and often favours berries and fruit over seed.

A Pine Grosbeak feeds on minerals in de-icing mix on a Silver Star Mountain driveway. 

House Finch – The common light brown and white finch with the red on the face and breast. Some variants can be orange-fronted. Females and immatures lack the colour. Resident. In winter, occurs in flocks.

Cassin’s Finch – A local, erratically occurring and uncommon summer resident and sometimes winter resident of the Ponderosa Pines, Douglas-firs and mountain forests below the subalpine region.

Red Crossbill – Usually, but not always, a rare visitor to feeders, preferring seeds of spruce, pine and other conifer species which it extracts, clambering about the tree like a little parrot, using its crossed mandible to draw the seed from between the scales of the cone.

Common Redpoll – A winter visitor, rare some years and common others.

A Common Redpoll feeds on seedheads in our garden. 

 

Pine Siskin – Another common finch that travels in flocks and can visit any feeder at any time. Golden flashes in the wings identify the males from the rather plain brown stripy females.

American Goldfinch – During spring and summer this is the familiar “wild canary”, the male a bright yellow with jaunty little black cap on his forehead and black and white wings. The female is a soft gray-green and white with similarly patterned wings. From mid August until next spring the males resemble the females, losing their yellow feathers except around the face. Goldfinches love water. They may be one of the first birds to investigate a bird bath and will drink there several times a day.

Evening Grosbeak – During the 1970s and 1980s this yellow and black finch with the big pale conical bill was quite common but has since declined significantly. Only a few bird feeders will be visited by the Evening Grosbeak in its hunt for sunflower seeds. However, once a flock establishes itself at a feeder, it may become resident for months at a time.

Male Evening Grosbeak.

House (English) Sparrow – Introduced into the United States in the mid 1800s, this member of the Old World Weaver Finch family took about 50 years to spread from New York City reaching Vernon in 1909. It was much more abundant in the days of horse and wagon and the family farm. Since then, the House Sparrow makes its home in urban settings and around farm yards.

References -

Campbell, R. Wayne, Neil K. Dawe, Ian McTaggart-Cowan, John M. Cooper, Gary W. Kaiser, Michael C.E. McNall. 1990. The Birds of British Columbia - Volume Two: Nonpasserines - Diurnal Birds of Prey through Woodpecker. Canadian Wildlife Service, Royal British Columbia Museum, Victoria, B.C.  

Cannings, Robert A., Richard J. Cannings,  and Sydney G. Cannings. 1987. Birds of the Okanagan Valley, British Columbia. Royal British Columbia Museum, Victoria, B.C.

Terres, John K. Songbirds in Your Garden, 5th edition. 1994. Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, P.O. Box 225, Chapel Hill, North Carolina.  

Kakadu - The Top End - Part Two

1 May 2015 -

White-bellied Sea-eagle, easy to see at Yellow Water, Kakadu National Park - 3 May 2015

After our peaceful encounter with the Freshwater Croc (I have now made up my mind about its ID), we drove across a flat landscape into Kakadu National Park, Australia's largest national park (most Australian national parks are wee things). We stopped for the night inside the park at a mostly empty rv park (Aurora Kakado Hotel and Caravan Camping) which I remember for three reasons:

1. Gone were the well tended lawns, paved streets, swimming pools and complimentary drinks tickets of the Free Spirit RV Park of Darwin. In their places was a washroom block with taps leaking away the aquifer, pretty Green Tree-frogs clinging to the rounded contours of the sinks and toilets, and a large snag in the centre of the dusty, gravelly area where we were to park for the night. From the snag a Whistling Kite called noisily and frequently until darkness put an end to his bit of drama. However, at the first hint of dawn he started up again, this time with an equally vociferous partner.

2. When I took a short walk back toward the highway, I found an unpaved road from which a dingo promptly vanished into the bush. About 4 hours later several dingos close in gave us a lovely loud chorus under the almost full moon.  I am a canid fan so this was a real treat for me. Nothing caps a day in the field better than wolves howling, coyotes yipping, or dingos crying in the bush.

3. A Channel-billed Cuckoo flopped from treetop to treetop along the unpaved road, one of few seen this trip. I had become familiar with these huge from New South Wales' Blue Mountains especially in the Austral late spring and summer, October-December, when, as so many cuckoos do, the Channel-bills parasitize other birds, laying their eggs in the nests of Pied Currawongs, Australian Magpies and Torresian Crows (Pizzey and Knight, 9th ed. 2012). Its Latin name is Scythrops novaehollandiae, "angry-faced New Holland bird". Latham, the taxonomist responsible for naming it, may have been justified in appying such a name since a captive Channel-bill he tried to tame kept biting him (Fraser and Gray 2013).

Other birds around the rv park included White-throated, White-gaped, Rufous-banded, and Dusky honeyeaters, Pied Imperial Pigeon, Grey Whistler, Arafura Fantail, Little Corella, Sulphur-crested Cockatoo, Galah, Varied Triller, and Broad-billed Flycatcher.


2 May 2015

Our first stop was Mamukala Wetland Lookout, which was underwhelming, given its dryness. However, in addition to two Horsfield's Bronze-Cuckoos, a Little Bronze-Cuckoo popped up close in front of me, so close I was able to see its red eyering, lack of mask and shiny green upperparts. In general when it came to differentiating the three species of bronze-cuckoos, I was a slow learner. I couldn't keep their names straight for one thing, which makes ID impossible. Now (March 2016) I don't know what the problem could have been. Differentiating the three species seems straight forward. All of the major field guides even agree as to the common names, which is not always the case with Aussie birds.

One of the joys of Territorial birding is the presence of Red-tailed Black Cockatoos, huge black parrots with red panels in their long black tails.  Two flew over with slow wingbeats as we were about to leave Mamukala Lookout. Long, powerful wings sweep up and down in what Pizzey and Knight term "majestic" beats; how true!

Red-tailed Black Cockatoos over the Northern Territory - April, 2015

As we drove along the Arnhem Highway between Mamukala and Jabiru, the familiar birder's dilemma asserted itself, the need to make actual progress down the road VS the very strong desire to stop and beat the bushes (not literally) for all those birds and mammals you just know you're missing as you pass one possible pull-off after another. I was heartened to glimpse two Blue-winged Kookaburras, the pale-eyed cousin of the nationally symbolic Laughing Kookaburra. (Notice how I avoided the use of a certain word starting with i that has become so overused that is now meaningless. Why just the other day I saw a magazine article entitled "Unknown Icons". Wait a minute. If it's unknown, it can't be bloody iconic, can it, mate?)

At Bowali Visitors Centre out walked the easiest life bird of the trip. Two of them: a pair of Partridge Pigeons, in the words of Pizzey and Knight (2012) "squat, dull-brown ...with distinctive head pattern" in our case, the bare red skin in a sort of arcing mask around the pale, clueless eye. These birds, perhaps a male and a female, were obviously looking for handouts, the way Rock Pigeons do the world over. Given the harsh uncertainty, the drought and flood, the boom and bust of the climate of the Northern Territory, begging from tourists may be a wise investment of time, especially when you look as harmless as a pale-eyed turnip.

The Partridge Pigeon's Latin, bestowed upon it by a Mr. G.R. Gray in 1840, is Geophaps smithii. Geo is Greek for "earth" and phaps is Greek for "wild pigeon", perhaps an onomatopoetic rendering of the sound of pigeons' wings. I'm guessing.

The generic Geophaps is plain but at least it's not insulting. The maligned cuckoo-doves of the shadowy forests of the east coast of Australia have to put up with "Macropygia" for a first name, Greek for "big bum". While admittedly worth a giggle if you're as immature as I am, not only is "big bum" politely incorrect, its also inaccurate since the lovely coppery brown feathers of the Brown Cuckoo-Dove do NOT make the bird's ass look big.   Pizzey and Knight (2012) seem to agree with me, calling the cuckoo-dove a "graceful, long-tailed pigeon".

The Partridge Pigeon, pale-eyed beggar at Bowali Visitors Centre, 2 May 2015. 

"Does my pygia look macro like this?" ponders a Brown Cuckoo-Dove at Mapleton, Queensland, April, 2015

We stopped briefly at a wetland just off the highway next to the Malabanjbandjdju Caravan Camping pull-off and had a taste of the birding to come the next day at Yellow Water: Comb-crested Jacanas stalked over the lily pads, egrets stood around the edges while a Whistling Kite competed with three Wandering Whistling Duck in whistling. A Brown Falcon flew past as did three Red-collared Lorikeets and a flock of 40 Little Corellas. Just off the side of the highway I discovered the only nightjar I was to see during the entire 2015 trip, a flat and sun-dried, and very deceased Spotted Nightjar.

We camped at Cooindra, a resort next to the permanent billabong, Yellow Water, where the next dawn we boarded a tourist boat with bench seat and an cheerful, casual Australian guide who kept a running monologue of information about the billabong and its abundant birds. Check any book that lists the best birding spots in the world, such as Dominic Couzens' Top 100 Birding Sites of the World and you will find Yellow Water, possibly listed as "Kakadu" or some variation thereof. This long, marshy water hole is home to "heaps and heaps", to use the Aussie expression, of tropical birdlife. Depending upon the timing of the two seasons of the NT, the wet and the dry, you may see hundreds if not thousands of water birds including the species that we saw this day: Great, Intermediate (up to 90,000 some years), Cattle and Little egrets, Pied Herons, Rufous Night Herons, and if you are luckier than we were, the rare Black Bittern. Alongside them are wheezing throngs of Plumed Whistling Ducks, Pacific Black Ducks, Green Pygmy Geese (among the tiniest waterfowl in the world), and thousands of the huge, primitive looking Magpie Goose. The Black-necked Stork a satiny-black and white giant standing 1.4 m tall, wields a sharply pointed sturdy glossy black bill, and has a long glossy neck, black and white body, short black tail and long bright red legs. A huge stick inverted mound in a snag is a stork's nest  visible from the boat. Also huge are the White-bellied Sea-eagles that have become quite habituated to the tourist boat and will perch close overhead, allowing photography even with cell phones.

The beginning of the Yellow Water boat tour - dawn, 3 May 2015

By the end of the two hour boat ride, I had listed 31 species of birds including Azure Kingfisher, a little beauty of a bird, bright red-faced Crimson Finches, Rainbow Bee-eaters, White-breasted Woodswallows, Forest Kingfisher, as well as Darters, Whiskered Terns, Glossy Ibis and other wetland birds.

Black-necked Stork in the fierce NT sun, 1 May 2015, Fogg Dam.

 After the substantial breakfast that is included in the tour price, we headed to nearby Nourlangie Rock, an outlying bit of the Arnhem Escarpment. Much of the exposed sandstone is covered with hundreds of Aboriginal paintings, some possibly depicting the origin of thunder. A boardwalk constructed to bring the tourist close to the rock art winds up and over some of the "best", most colorful designs. Of course for those of us who are not of Aboriginal descent, the best we can do is try to remember what we have seen of the art and to do some research afterwards.

Nourlangie Rock is home to the Banded Fruit Dove, a small, shy pigeon that most often perches quite still, when not feeding, overlooking clueless birders like me who unknowingly walk beneath it, the pigeon invisible to my sun-dazzled eyes because of its shadow-and-light, black-and-white plumage. I'm sure I must have walked beneath a few during our hour at the site.

As we were about to leave, the last people at the site at that time, a Great Bowerbird popped out of nowhere to land on the beaten path. Unlike the brightly coloured male Satin, Regent, and Golden bowerbirds, the Great Bowerbird is much more subdued in plumage, being a soft gray-brown with pale spots. However, it makes up for lack of vivid hue by making itself obvious, my kind of bird. No mistaking this guy for a shadow in the canopy, no way. The Great Bowerbird, to paraphrase Pizzey and Knight (2012) bounds about, active and inquisitive. Its flight is undulating. When the male displays, he does knee bends, grabs objects in his bill, ruffles his feathers and cocks his tail. Just in case you're looking elsewhere, he re-directs your attention to him by hissing like a little gray-brown steam engine, lowering his head and spreading his small pink crest. What a bird!

Great Bowerbird going into a knee bend - Pine Creek, NT - 4 May 2015.

We drove east through Jabiru toward the mis-named Alligator River and Cahill's Crossing, which is a shallow place atop a dam. Just downstream people were spending a warm. calm slightly buggy Sunday afternoon fishing. These were the genuine human inhabitants of Kakadu

Fishing below Cahill's Crossing. Alligator River, Kakadu National Park - 3 May 2015

After a humid afternoon in which I spotted both Little Friarbirds and Silver-crowned Friarbirds around the campground, we spent a hot night sealed inside the van because of the voracious mosquitoes. The heat re-activated our chigger welts so we weren't bored, always having insane itches to scratch somewhere on our motley hides.

Our plan was to rise before dawn to hike over the sandstone outcrops near Cahill's Crossing for any of the sandstone endemics, including the Chestnut-quilled Rock Pigeon and the Sandstone Rock Thrush. Perhaps because of last night's short, uncomfortable sleep, we dipped on both thrush and pigeon. A Pallid Cuckoo flew by, a couple of Sulphur-crested Cockatoos hung around a tall snag, and a Short-eared Rock Wallaby stuck around long enough to get on my mammal life list, but we had come all this way and didn't see the birds for which the area was famous, at least among birders.

Almost as bad as missing an endemic is having to put up with your birding friends' questions afterwards:

"Did you see the Sandstone Rock Thrush?"
"No."
"Stunning bird! Really something. Long, sleek, and lots of personality, a typical shrike thrush but bigger, and found nowhere else except the escarpments of ..."
"Yeah, I get it. Or rather I didn't get it. It was awfully hot that morning."
"You mean you looked for only one morning? Oh, you need more time than that. We walked for five days before we found one. Did I ever tell you the story?"
"Yes, you've told me the story. Let's get some lunch,  shall we?"
"OK. But what about the Chestnut-quilled Rock Pigeon? Did you find it? We had to work REALLY hard for for the pigeon...."


We had better luck on our way out of Kakadu when we climbed a dry forested hill to Mirral Lookout, viewing the escarpment to the east. Here, quite by chance, we stumbled into small parties of a lifer, the Banded Honeyeater.

Banded Honeyeater at blossom. 

Our destination, the little outback town of Pine Creek, NT, lay to the northeast. I will describe our stay in PIne Creek in my next post.

The Northern Territory - The Top End - Part One

This episode is dedicated to Sonja Siddle, who also bore it all.

In the early spring of 2015 Sonja and I visited Ken and Megan Cross and their children in the little mountain town of Mapleton, southeast Queensland. After a delightful four weeks in the Blackall Range, we said goodbye to the Crosses, and flew from Brisbane to Darwin for our first visit to what Australians call the Top End.

The Northern Territory is vast, 1.35 million km squared, with a long human prehistory, 40,000 years of inhabitation by various tribal groups of indigenes. When White Australia attempted to settle the area, three disasterous attempts were made before Port Darwin became established in the 1860s. Today the Territory is populated by 233,000 hardy human residents. Settlements are strung out along the Stuart Highway rather than the coast.  Besides Darwin (136,000 people ), there’s Alice Springs (28,000), Katherine ( 6100), Tennant Creek (3000) and not much else, aside from delightful little settlements like Pine Creek (700). The economy of the Territory is heavily based upon tourism and mining. Some of those tourists are birders, looking for Top End specialties like the Sandstone Shrike-thrush and Hooded Parrot.

Rufous-banded Honeyeater, a common honeyeater around Darwin. Photo by Chris Siddle. 

Though comparatively brief, the Northern Territory has a colourful history, with small Victoria outposts of the Empire dying of neglect , ignorance, and disease, a gold rush, the building of a railway, and migrations of Indian, Malay and Chinese workers into an often hostile white society. In World War II, beginning on 19 Feb. 1942, the Japanese bombed Darwin, Katherine and even Broome in Western Australia several times. Historians are divided upon whether the bombings were a prelude to a planned invasion of Australia or a dramatic demarkation of the limits of Japanese control. As if the capital hadn't suffered enough, on Christmas Eve, 1974 Cyclone Tracey wiped out large sections of Darwin (70% of buildings and 80% of homes were destroyed) and killed 71 people. Thousands of residents were evacuated, some “blown out” never to return to the Territory. However, frequent devastation makes for plenty of opportunities to improve the design of the city and its motorways. Darwin is a nice place to drive once you figure out the basic main routes.

Renting a vehicle in Darwin is not so easy as driving its streets, especially if you're trying to rent a camper van. There usually comes a time in each of our journeys together that I melt into a puddle of frustration and anger, and Sonja has to rescue me from making a complete burke of myself. This trip my low moment began when we entered the van rental place on the oh-so-appropriately named Bombing Road.

After a lengthy question and answer period at the counter, the middle-aged woman clerk knew my credit card number, our birthdates, our passport numbers, the names of our children, our blood types, our Canadian driving license numbers, the dates and places of all previous driving infractions we could recall, the makes and models of all vehicles we had ever driven or been passengers in, the names of our pets, and our health profiles. She put the cap on her pen, waved the 14 inch long form to dry its ink in the humid air and, inclining her head to her right, indicated a single computer standing on a high table in the middle of the cinder-block room.

There on the screen was an blank version of the same form the lady, who I shall call Madge, had just filled out.

"Yous go ahead and just fill that out."

“Wait a minute. We just answered these questions. What are you going to do with that page of answers you just got from us.? “

“Oh, this form? It’s for something else. Now yous have to complete the computer form to reserve your vehicle.”

“But the travel agent in Canada reserved one for us months ago.”

“Well, yous have to fill it out to get your reservation number. Then we have to see if we have a van for yous.”

Madge never specified what she was going to do with our counter form but possibly she wanted it for the Darwin Museum of Silly Things She Made Tourists Waste Their Time With.

Two or three questions into computer form, the program froze. I looked around for help. Madge was heading out the door, leaving behind her co-workers, a young lady and a very quiet boy with his hair in a pigtail. After watching Madge disappear into the back of the office, I managed to attract the attention of the young lady who, it turned out, had just emigrated to Australia two weeks before. 

In a loud voice coloured by a strong Dublin accent, she dragged over Pigtail. Avoiding direct eye contact, reaching for the mouse as if it were a live grenade, Pigtail agitated the mouse tentatively,  whispered inaudible words and darted back behind an office partition. The program remained frozen. I got back into line for the counter.

“The program is still frozen,” I exclaimed several minutes later when I finally got to speak to Dublin again.

“Give him the DVD, “ said Madge as she popped back into the office and then out the door again.

Dublin placed a small plastic clam-like object in my hand. I guessed it was a compact DVD player. A tinny soundtrack played at about volume 2. In the echoing office, I was going to need a lot more volume that that. I stared at the postage stamped sized screen. As far as I could tell a man was demonstrating how to wash a camper van to preserve its finish. Unless I intended to own a van, I didn’t need to know this. I pressed what may have been a button and the DVD switched to the section on how to change the oil, again something I didn’t plan on doing. I pressed the button again. Back to washing the van and a sound track no one could hear. 

By now I could tell by their everted eyes and their eagerness to help other customers who kept coming through the doors that we could be here all day, with Dublin, Madge and Pigtail content to have me cycle fruitlessly between a frozen computer and an inaudible DVD player. That’s when I reached back into my past and marshaled my outrage. Now I spoke in the voice of a teacher who has entered an unruly classroom.

“ RIGHT, I NEED YOUR ATTENTION NOW. PIGTAIL, LOOK AT ME. YOU TOO IRELAND. GO GET YOUR BOSS. I’M GETTING UPSET.”

Turns out that's all I had to do. Madge was summoned. She ordered Dublin to take us outside and show us the Toyoto Hiace we were to live in for the next week. In a matter of minutes we were driving down Bombing Road headed for the highway to Palmerston, an eastern suburb, all forms abandoned. (Many weeks later, back in Canada, I received an email questionnaire asking me how I would evaluate the service at the van rental. I haven't yet gathered the spite and anger to reply. Besides, I'm sure Dublin has moved on, if she was smart, Pigtail has probably since expired from social anxiety and Madge is still there, immovable as a rock in the harbour.)

Lemon-bellied Flycatcher - at the Free Spirit RV Park in Darwin. Photo by Chris Siddle

The afternoon wearing on, we decided to spend the night at the Free Spirit RV Park and Resort, a large well tended establishment where on registering the camper is directed to the swimming pool and given a free drink ticket, not our usual kind of place but it would do. In spite of the groomed lawns, cement curbs, and a tall chain link fence keeping the tropical growth at bay, birds prevailed especially in the evening which because of Darwin’s low latitude lasted about 5 minutes. Red-tailed Cockatoos flew over every evening we were there, along with Little Corellas (a delightful mini-cockatoo),  and Red-collared Lorikeets, that most Australian bird books treated as a full species, instead of “just” a subspecies of the familiar and widespread Rainbow Lorikeet. Who was I to argue with splitist taxonomy?

The most surprising addition to my lifelist was the little Lemon-bellied Flycatcher or Lemon-bellied Flyrobin that was hunting from a utility wire over our camper site. **It’s not one of our flycatchers, of course, nor an Old World Flycatcher, but was initially given its common named because it reminded ornithologists of a northern hemisphere flycatcher. That’s the thing about many Australian and New Guinean birds; when the English, Irish, Scots and Welsh began to settle Australia after the First Fleet of 1788 they had no names for groups of birds they had never imagined existed so spliced together names of familiar birds of Great Britain to best cover the situation. That why there are cuckoo-shrikes, shrike-thrushes, magpie larks, shrike-tits, etc. “Shrike” certainly got a workout, partially because so many Australian songbirds are relatively large and often omnivorous, quaffying skinks as readily as insects. "Flyrobin" is an attempt to create a new category of songbird, a small bird resembling an imagined cross between a European Robin and an Old World Flycatcher. 

The Lemon-bellied Flycatcher belongs to a group called the Australo-Papuan Robins, which include several very colourful robin-like birds, if you’re thinking of the little Eurasian Robin and not the North American Robin. Gets complicated, doesn’t it. To make matters more complicated, Australian ornithologists are a fractious lot, without a single set of agreed-upon common names. Things are much better than they were back in the day when a Radjah Shelduck was also known as a Burdekin Duck. However, even when ALL major Australian field guides agree that a bird is called a Little Shrike-thrush, eBird based on Clements sticks its oar in and lists it as Rufous Shrike-thrush. 

The Lemon-bellied Flycatcher is known for having the smallest nest of any Australian bird, an absurdly tiny concoction of cobwebs, mosses and lichens, a bit like our Western Wood-Pewee’s nest, but even smaller and lower, barely a ring of material on a horizontal branch. Fortunately the female lays only a single egg. Clearly from a reproductive point of view the Lemon-bellied Flycatcher differs much from the New World flycatchers that breed in Canada, which, on the whole build substantial nests and lay “normal” (read Northern Hemisphere)  clutches of 3-5 eggs.

29 April - The next day we tried to find Knuckey Lagoons Conservation Reserve supposedly not far from our rv park. We may have found Lagoon Road but we missed Randall Road and didn’t find the lagoons. This was not the first time we were tempted to hurl our copy of Finding Australian Birds: A Field Guide to Birding Locations by Tim Dolby and Rohan Clarke out the window.

We did find the Darwin Botanical Gardens where Orange-footed Scrubfowl played silly-buggers, running away from us as if we were intent upon killing them. These turkey sized birds are megapodes, “big feet”, using their big feet to scratch together mounds of vegetation on the forest floor and burying their eggs within the rotting leaves and soil, able to somehow determine just the right temperature for incubation, adding to or subtracting from the mound to adjust its internal temperature. An egg hatches, the extremely precocial chicks digs his way out of the mound and sets off to feed and raise himself without any parental supervision. I would love to see a chick emerge but haven’t yet.

The largest and most ubiquitous of the Australian bird families is the group called they honeyeaters (Fraser and Gray 2013) It's also arguably the most colourful and enjoyable group of Australian birds.  There are approximately 76 species on the continent and several more in Papua-New Guinea and on various islands in the Southwest Pacific. "Honeyeater" forms part of many species' common names except for a few called miners, wattlebirds, spinebills, chats, the gibberbird, and a few myzolemas. None actually eat honey. The word may have originated in South Africa where it may have been first applied to honeyguides, which as you know do eat honey (Fraser and Gray). But Australian honeyeaters by and large feed on nectar and some insects drawn to it. Three of the most common and widespread Northern Territory species were evident among the blossoms of the botanic gardens: the Brown Honeyeater with its spritely song (known as the Bush Canary), the White-throated Honeyeater, and new for me, the little Rufous-banded Honeyeater, one of my target species.

We also saw one Pied Imperial Pigeon, a big white pigeon with black secondaries, primaries and most of its tail, a bird that once flocked in the thousands, breeding in large colonies on the islands off Queensland and a much appreciated wild food favoured by early white settlers. 

As the morning heated up we drove to East Point Reserve where a breeze over the Arafura Sea cooled us wonderfully. Canadians are great world travelers as long as the ambient temperature stays between 20 and 24 degrees Cel. After a morning of staring into thick forest vegetation looking for small greenish birds, I was delighted to see that there were highly visible waders (shorebirds) out on the distant edge of the shell encrusted rocks. All I had to do was to cross a Saharan expanse of the world’s brightest sunlight and flesh shriveling heat to get to them. I had my Kowa scope along so that I could study them at a distance without flushing them. Shorebirds have enough trouble with people and their damned pets disturbing them on beaches. These waders were trying to put on weight to fuel their migration to Asia for the Northern Hemisphere spring. They didn’t need yet another interruption to their caloric intake.

The excitement I felt as I drew closer to the assembly of waders might be called the thrill of the hunt, but it’s more a mix of anticipation of discovery with a fear that suddenly the flock obey the urge to migrate and disappear in the distance. Once I set up the tripod and the birds stayed relaxed on the edge of the surf,  I was happy as a child at Christmas, staring at the heaps of presents under the tree. Different sizes, shapes, and gift wraps. And such a toolkit of varied bills and beaks, to mix metaphors: the improbable slender sickle of a tall Eastern Curlew, the recurved levers of ten squat Terek Sandpipers, the short can-openers of two Ruddy Turnstones, and the long probes of two Grey-tailed Tattlers, all of them side by side like a diagram from an ornithology text.

The most challenging members of the flock were the sand plovers. Were both species, Greater and Lesser, present or was I just being greedy? The bulk of the group seemed small, short, and slender, and yet 3 were larger, sturdier, slightly longer billed birds. I went through the flock again and again. Were those larger birds just a product of my wishful thinking? No, there they were again and again. These would be my Greaters, all the rest Lessers.

The tide was coming in, the wader flock shifting from the beach to rocks now offshore. As I retreated, a Brahminy Kite swooped at a tidepool, picked something from just beneath the surface, and flew off, chestnut bodied and white headed against the blue of the sky. Wow.

The bushes and the lawn on the point provided me with shade, the breeze and a good selection of birds throughout lunch and into the afternoon. A Paperbark Flycatcher was new, found around the Melaleulcas (trees). Also present were my new friends the Lemon-bellied Flycatcher and the Rufous-banded Honeyeaters, as well as a small group of White-breasted Woodswallows, a White-bellied Cuckoo-shrike, Rainbow Bee-eaters, and a Horsfield’s Bronze-Cuckoo which had me madly taking fieldnotes as it co-operately posed no more than 4 m from me.

Our rented camper in Kakadu National Park. Photo by Chris Siddle

April 30 involved a brief early morning visit to Holmes Jungle Nature Reserve, as Finding Australian Birds, the birdfinding guide we were test-driving, informed us, “20 km from Darwin’s CBD”. Fortunately this was not our first trip to Australia so we knew that “CBD” means “central business district”, the equivalent of Western Canadians “downtown”. Holmes Jungle is an expansive brushy slope adjacent to a very large garbage dump, which explained that the first memorable sight in the Reserve was a large dead tree full of Whistling and Black kites. Also the dump explained why it was easy to see a Dingo skulking away down the dirt road toward the distant trash.

The bf guide talked up the site as a place to find Brown and King quail, and possibly Red-backed and Red-chested buttonquail. I had had a recent brush with buttonquail habitat in south-east Queensland and I couldn’t afford physically or emotionally to risk possibly repeating the miserable and long-lasting negative consequences of my first buttonquail hunt.  My mate, birder extraordinaire, Ken Cross of Mapleton, had lead me into a thicket Mount Wooroolin (near Kingaroy), one of few sites where the Black-breasted Buttonquail can be found by the sharp-eyed as it slinks away beneath the pestiferous underbrush. We did glimpse the shadowy forms of a pair of buttonquail but couldn’t tell from the distance which species we were seeing. Fair enough. A buttonquail sp. was better than no buttonquail at all. Thank you, Ken. However, 24 hours later I began to itch, a deep-sited crazy itch that could not be satisfied by scratching but was spreading, from behind my knees, and around my ankles upwards towards my thighs and precious bits down under, marking its progress with archipelagos of red welts. Forty-eight hours later I was pawing through the Nambour yellow pages in search of a physician who could prescribe something to stop the itch or assist me in my suicide.

Chiggers, you see, or rather you don’t see because they are invisible to the human eye. Online research was hopeless, as it is regarding chiggers in North America where I had already encountered the wee terrible beasts in 2000 when Chris Charlesworth, Rick Howie, Mike Force, and Gary Davidson and I were exploring coastal Texas. On line everyone is a chigger expert and nobody knows anything. Some advise that chiggers are ticks. No. They are tiny mites. Some claim that the chiggers are living inside your skin. Again, no. The chigger samples your skin, doesn’t like it and leaves, but not before setting up a local irritation of maddening itchiness surrounded by a large red bump. Scratching will make the itch worse. OK, that’s true. It’s almost impossible not to scratch. Again, true. The torture will last three weeks. That depends. Sonja’s itchiness lasted closer to six weeks, poor girl.

Radjah Shelduck near Howard Springs, Darwin. Why is it not swimming? See photo at article's conclusion. Photo by Chris Siddle

Back at Homes Jungle, with my Queensland chiggers still itching me, I was not keen to plunge into the bushes and pick up fresh mites. I don’t think I could have stood more torment so I contented myself by standing in the middle of the dirt road, as far from the thickets as possible and watching birds fly by. When a mite-proof suit is developed, then I’ll go after buttonquail.

A White-bellied Sea-Eagle circled overhead; a nice big bird. You didn’t have to stick your head in a bush and risk cooties crawling down your neck to see it.  A small flock of Pied Herons passed by, very high up. The herons were lifers and I hoped that I would get a closer look at one soon. A movement in a eucalypt turned out to be a Bar-breasted Honeyeater, another lifer, and a very distinctive looking bird. I was to see only two more Bar-breasts in our holiday so it wasn’t like they were common.

In the afternoon we once again retreated to the ocean in search of cooling breezes. This time we visited Lee Point hoping for more shorebirds and were not disappointed. Today's assembly included Whimbrels, a Great Knot, Greater Sand-plovers, Ruddy Turnstones, a Black-bellied Plover, Sanderlings, Grey-tailed Tattlers, Terek Sandpipers, and a Sooty Oystercatcher. Numbers were small as the wader season was approaching its end. Resident species included Masked Lapwings, of course, and the delicate Red-capped Plover. A pair of Red-caps had at least one tiny downy chick on the sun-blasted rocks and sand of the point.

There was also a small flock of several species of terns included Little, Black-naped, a Caspian, Gull-billed, Lesser Crested, Greater Crested and White-winged terns.

In the bushes on shore I found a lifer, the Red-headed Honeyeater or Red-headed Myzomela. Honeyeaters (Meliphagidae) as a group are made up of several genera including Lichenostomus, Meliphaga, Manorina, Anthochaera, etc. Myzomela at first appeared to me to be a rather arbitary use of the generic name until I thought it through. If they are sufficiently distinct, honeyeaters often become known by their group names: miners, wattlebirds, and spinebills for example.  Myzomelas are small, have long slender curved bills, but more importantly several species show clear sexual dimorphism (something like 15 of 31 myzomela species show striking sexual differences in plumage) something that most honeyeaters don't show. 

Only a couple of kilometres from Lee Point was Buffalo Creek where a boat launch was famous among Top End and visiting birders as one of the few places where a person has a sporting chance of spotting the large but elusive Chestnut Rail. When we arrived there was a lengthy queue of fishermen and boaters waiting their turn at the launch so unless the rail wanted a very large audience, there seemed little hope of seeing one.  However, from the mangroves a pair of lifer Green-backed Gerygones dropped to eye-level to investigate my pishing. A Grey Whistler, a Large-billed Gerygone, and an unidentified bronze-cuckoo competed for my attention. Out on the mangrove mud and beach sand Black Kites squatted in the bright sun and noon heat.

1 May -  Before we left Darwin, we visited Howard Springs Nature Park. On the way we passed a mucky wetland on the side of the road and spotted my first Radjah Shelducks, large white ducks with black wings, curiously lemon coloured eyes and horn coloured bills.

Howard Springs was developed during the Second World War as a rest and recreation camp for American soldiers. Prior to WW II, it was Darwin’s major water source, named for a Royal Navy captain who had explored the coast of the Northern Territory in the second half of the 19^th Century. Now a suburb 29 km southeast of Darwin’s CBD is growing up around the Springs.

It’s a quiet picnic place, bathing spot and playground where young mothers bring their toddlers for morning exercise on the jungle gyms. Tourists stroll across the short dam and are content to stare into the pool behind it for freshwater fishes like grunters and for Yellow-faced Turtles. A printed sign cautioned visitors to be quiet around the dam because now at the beginning of the Dry Season, file snakes (ACROCHORDIDAE) were hunting fish. Wow, how great is that! I had seen file snakes in identification guides only and knew them to be shy, curiously baggy looking snakes, harmless to people but great fishers. My field guide, sadly unneeded at this point, stated that on land a file snake moves “with all the elegance of a wet sock.”

 For some reason lost to me, the trail through the monsoon forest next to the dam was closed, but it was a simple matter, since no one was looking, to dodge under the yellow Caution tape and take the track through the woods. I was looking, as all birders that come here do, for the Rainbow Pitta, a real little beauty. Pittas weren’t singing since it was the off-season so the search was tricky and unsuccessful. I did stumble upon my first Arafura Fantail, like most fantails, a confiding and curious bird that took a good look at me as I at him. One encounter with almost any of the Australian fantails (6 species) and you will know how the bird got its group name. There is, or course, the most widespread fantail but it's called, confusingly, Willie Wagtail. Australia has lost many a potential birder just because of this kind of confusion. Imagine a bright young person on his or her first (and last) birdwalk with a local expert. The day is sunny, the temperature not too hot. And what's that bird flitting about on the lawn? "Willie Wagtail," says the expert.

"Oh, I heard of wagtails, but I didn't know that we had any in Australia," chirps the eager youngster.

"We don't except for a couple of vagrants. Willie Wagtail is a fantail."

"Why not call him Willie Fantail then?"

"Because people wouldn't like Willie Fantail."

"What people?"

"The people who have always called him Willie Wagtail, that's who."

And at this point, the young person gives up birding and takes up a life of crime.

Arafura Fantail, one of the Top End specialties- Howard Springs Nature Park. Photo by Chris Siddle. 

  Before crossing into Kakadu National Park we stopped at Fogg Dam near Humpty Doo. This is a water impoundment with a worldwide reputation as a good birding site. No sooner had I parked the van in the shade of some tall trees than I began spotting birds: my new friend, the Lemon-bellied Flycatcher, my lifer Broad-billed Flycatcher, Yellow Orioles, and a Bar-breasted Honey-eater. The dam is about a kilometer long and has extensive marsh on both sides, with spectacular birds, even in the off-season, like Black-necked Storks, a colony of Whiskered Terns, Rainbow Bee-eaters, a flock of Varied Trillers in drab non-breeding plumage, and dozens of Intermediate Egrets, as well as Glossy Ibises. Here I got my close looks and photographs of both adult and immature Pied Herons.

We had the place to ourselves until car full of tourists slowly drove across the dam, stopping next to what in the distance looked like a big tire that had come apart not far from where we had parked the van. The passengers stared at the tire. Returning to the van at this time, Sonja was unaware of the object since the newcomers’ vehicle blocked her view. By the time I had birded my way back towards the van I discerned that our retread was, in fact, a crocodile, stout-bodied, green-black, broad at ears but narrow along the snout. It was inert, strewn with a few drying aquatic weeds and regarding me without interest. ‘Hmm, ‘ I thought, ‘narrow snout. Must be a freshwater croc. Harmless.’ I stood about 1 m from the beast’s snout, then backed up and took photos of it with the only lens I had, a telephoto.

Now when I show the photos, my audience is usually divided, some identifying the croc as a freshie and others as an Estuarine (Saltwater) croc, the man-eating croc of Top End legends.  Either way (you decide which is shown below), I have to laugh. How could I have been so careless as to get so close to what could have been a member of a man-eating species? I had acted like one of those nature-ignorant motorists who upon seeing a bear beside the road in one of our national parks, pulls over and tries to get it to take food from his hand.

My Aussie croc- Fogg Dam. Photo by C. Siddle

In the next installment Sonja and I explore Kakadu National Park.