Unexpectedly weary after our Alligator Creek Track bushwalk yesterday, Vilis and I dragged ourselves off to meet the Townsville birders for a morning excursion to Forestry Road, which leads from the small community of Bluewater north of Townsville up into the southern reaches of Paluma Range National Park. Car pooling was the order of the day, so we teamed up with Norm in his white, crew-cab ute equipped with a two-way radio. “This group likes to travel in a convoy,” he told us. Immediately, disembodied voices began to relay driving directions, bird sightings, and gently teasing comments indicative of the kind of camaraderie that accompanies long years of friendly association.

The excursion became a series of stops along Forestry Road that ended on the discovery of a locked gate. After retracing our path, the group proceeded west to Crystal Creek, first following the creek upstream to the campground at Paradise Waterhole, and then downstream to the ocean. Dusty gravel roads were interspersed with bitumen. Kilometres of driving were interspersed with intense birding stops. When a member called a sighting, birdos scurried to his or her side. Multiple pairs of binoculars swung into sighting position, and excited oohs and aahs ensued.

Accustomed to birding alone and wrestling with myself over fieldmarks, it was a novel experience to work as a group on challenging identifications, notably a shining bronze-cuckoo and a square-tailed kite. Even our snack and lunch breaks were infused with scanning searches of ground and trees for avian shapes, and quick lifts of binos and cameras. All present (with the exception of Vilis, who was content to chat and photograph) had been infected by the birding bug, a passion that brought together individuals of disparate backgrounds and melded them into a unit having a shared and sharing goal of observing Australia’s wealth of bird life. I counted myself fortunate to be part of it.

Today’s birds: masked lapwings, rock doves, mynas, galah, *white-rumped swiftlets, peaceful dove, bar-shouldlered dove, white-bellied cuckoo-shrike, yellow honeyeaters, rainbow lorikeets, *fairy gerygone, blue-faced honeyeater, *graceful honeyeater, forest kingfishers, leaden flycatchers, spectacled monarchs, *shining bronze-cuckoo, rufous whistler, varied trillers, red-backed fairy-wrens, *square-tailed kite, white-throated honeyeater and nest, little shrike-thrushes, *northern fantail, black kite, double-barred finches, large-billed gerygone, rainbow bee-eaters, welcome swallows, magpie-larks, straw-necked ibis, Australian white ibises, anhingas, magpie geese, Australian magpies. (*denotes lifelist sighting)

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