There’s something about the rainforests of Paluma that draws us back again and again. The wild tangles of vegetation. The vines that Vilis loves. The suite of birds so different from those of Townsville. A chance, slim as it may be, of seeing the shaggy black plumage and blue-and-red-pigmented head of a flightless southern cassowary in the wild. We split up, Vilis and I, he wandering in the forest and doing his best to evade the spiky thorns of well-armed vines; I birding along village streets and rainforest tracks.

At first, I had little success, our arrival coinciding with the mid-day lull in birdsong. Still, male eastern whipbirds whistled their ascending calls topped by a whip-snap, and on my third attempt to locate one, I spotted a whipbird hurrying across a forest track and hopping up onto low vegetation, giving me a clear view of the long-tailed, white-throated disappearing artist whose song had taunted me for months.

In the sudued light beneath towering trees, I also found russet-tailed thrushes and chowchillas, the latter a female and male (voice like Pavarotti when inclined to sing) clucking quietly to each other while scratching up forest litter beneath a fallen trunk. A grey-headed robin flew into a nest propped between thin branches ten feet off the ground, and then disappeared into the forest, only to return a moment later with a strand of green moss in its beak. A female Victoria’s riflebird with richly spotted breast and long, curved bill clung acrobatically to tree trunks while probing for insects. And away up in the treetops, lit by the sun, a topknot pigeon in demure shades of grey and slate perched out in the open, its peculiar rolling ‘hair-do’ of crown feathers looking like the bird’s skull had met with a serious accident.

I spotted other birds, too, more familiar ones – spotted catbirds skulking quietly in a densely-branched tree, perky grey fantails that spread their lovely tails into coquettish fans, and crimson rosellas – slim, red and blue parrots – that perched like large, exquisite blossoms in a pink-flowering shrub. So, the rainforest presented me with more than I expected. I just had to look harder for it.

Today’s rainforest birds: Australian brush-turkeys, crimson rosellas, *russet-tailed thrushes, grey fantails, brown gerygones, pale-yellow robin, *eastern whipbird, little shrike-thrush, *grey-headed robin, *Victoria’s riflebird, *topknot pigeon, chowchillas, spotted catbirds, white-cheeked honeyeaters, scaly-breasted lorikeets, sulphur-crested cockatoos. (*denotes lifelist sighting)