Another hot day here in the rainforest area. We took a flat boat birding trip on the Daintree River with Murray. The water was pretty good and we went quickly down the river to a small channel where we went slowly down and then back to look at birds, some of them on nests, saw the Azure Kingfisher, the Shining Flycatcher (the female is very pretty in her own way), Papuan Frogmouth, Wampoo, Dollar Bird, and a Water Dragon. This was in the Mangrove channels where it is mainly brackish water. There were the aggressive Crocodiles also in this river. The birds were really special.
In the afternoon we went up to Mount Lewis, which is at about 1000 meters and did a long trail up there looking for specialty birds up at the higher elevations. The ones we had good looks at were the Atherton Scrub Wren, Bridled Honeyeater, Fern Wren, Victoria's Rifle Bird, White-headed Pigeon and a Chowchilla family.
I guess my favourite of the day was the Wampoo on the nest and it's call is exactly the same sound as its name WAM POO!
At dusk or nearly dark we went looking for owls and found the Australian Owlet Nightjar, and an Eastern Barn Owl. The Brush Curlews call at night here and their call is bone chilling, sounding like the screams of a child or a young person.
The jungle is full of insect sounds, gecko calls, owls and curlew wails. It is quite hair raising if one listens to it. I slather on the sunscreen each day but today forgot my knees and so they got burned sitting on the boat for two hours this morning. it wasn't really sunny but the sun is strong here as the equator is not that far away.
That's it for today, a full day of birding.
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