Western Australia, day 14

Townsville: In the wetland at Fairfield Waters, royal spoonbills perched in a flat-topped tree, the morning sun brilliant on their white feathers. In the shade of massive rain trees adjoining the wetland, female anhingas rested on branches, their necks like smooth, beige snakes rising above dark bodies and spread wings.  The morning sun caught a whistling kite scouting its domain, the sleek raptor’s speckled wings and rich fawn-coloured head highlighted by the early light, which also glinted off the black feathers of little black cormorants. So sleek and graceful in water, the cormorants appeared clumsy as they scrambled about on tree branches supporting their nesting colony. The calls of the offspring were incessant but low-key, the young birds’ wings fanning the air as they strained toward their parents delivering food.  One day while birding in Anderson Park Botanical Gardens, I encountered a birder who attempted to correct my identification of these cormorants, telling me firmly that they were shags, not cormorants. “I know it sounds rude,” she said. “But that’s what we call them.”

The shoreline vegetation was alive with songbirds, the most intriguing of which was a tiny female mistletoebird that plucked beakfuls of silk from a spider web, presumably for her nest. Another notable sighting was a Horsfield’s bronze-cuckoo. Even a spangled drongo – a species I’ve observed countless times – was cast into a brilliant sheen of black and green by the sunlight, its red eye fairly glowing. Exciting sightings, all.

Western Australia: As at Yakabindi, once the research crew had set out the camera traps on Cunyu, they focused on conducting vegetation, bird, and kangaroo surveys, as well as spotlighting.

Today’s birds: masked lapwings, magpie-larks, blue-faced honeyeater, rainbow lorikeets, Australian white ibises, myna, great egret, little black cormorants, royal spoonbills, intermediate egret, mistletoebird, spangled drongos, brown honeyeater, yellow honeyeaters, whistling kites, willie wagtails, peaceful doves, Horsfield’s bronze-cuckoo, anhingas, sulphur-crested cockatoos, comb-crested jacanas, white-bellied cuckoo-shrike, white-gaped honeyeater, black kites, little corellas, great bowerbird, nutmeg mannikins, bush stone-curlews, Pacific black ducks, Torresian crow, leaden flycatcher, welcome swallows.