Mt. Lewis
Luckily, we didn't have a flight to catch but we did want to get an early start up Mt. Lewis. Steve had told Barbara 6 am and she was ready, right outside the kitchen window as I washed the breakfast dishes. Unfortunately we were running about 10 minutes late but we were on our way shortly.
This road is so much better than the first time we drove it in 2003! Then we had to inch our way along, dodging ruts and trying to not bottom out the rental car that we were not supposed to be driving on an unsealed road. This time it was legal (I rented from Hertz especially because of this) and the road was just your normal gravel track. We made good time, and had a few good birding stops including one for a paradise kingfisher that posed for a bit. Barbara was very excited as she had not seen one in many years.
It was pretty cool up on the mountain, and the cloud cover just would not go completely away. Still, we had some fun things to watch.
- Gray fantail on its next, mom and dad trading places.
- Toothbilled bowerbird displaying, and doing some kind of funny things around it's collar/cheeks. Steve got it on video and we will have to check it out in my new bowerbird book.
- A Cairns Birdwing that actually decides to light on a tree and let me get a good long look
- Stopping so Barbara can try to tap out an owl and realizing that right outside my driver's side window two Chowchillas are perched in a tree
- A red-backed button quail skittering across the road as I read, and then three more that I flushed three different times
- A Macleay's Swallowtail
Steve got a fern wren that stubbornly stayed in shadow.
Cool Birds of the day
Buff-breasted Paradise Kingfisher
Gray Fantail
Red-backed button quail (r)
Grey headed Robin
Golden Whistler
Chowchilla
Eastern Spinebill
Mistletoe bird
Tooth-billed bowerbird
Cool butterflies of the day
Cairns Birdwing
Macleay's Swallowtail
Pale triangle (I think)
Ambrose Swallowtail (spotted by Carol Isles)
Ulysses
No comments:
Post a Comment