Cairns to Bowen

Left Cairns 4.15am, aiming to spend time exploring subcoastal, maybe coastal, habitats at Jerona/Barratta Creek, Alva Beach, Wunjunga Wetlands

Jerona / Barratta Creek, late morning: checked out mangrove, claypan and samphire habitat SSE of Jerona, around Barratta Ck camping area. Leaden but no Broad-billed flycatchers; pair of (nesting?) Brown goshawks; loads of Blue-winged Kookaburras; few Pallid cuckoos; multiple Black-winged storks;
Golden-headed (no Zitting) cisticola; Red-backed Kingfisher

While there, noted : c 10m tall, dense stands of Ceriops (australis?) dominating large stretches, interspersed w Avicennia marina, with multiple small stands of Bruguiera exaristata, and stand-out Xylocarpus moluccensis turning orange-red as they shed their leaves for the winter. Some of the gnarled old Bruguieras were a knock-out.

Wunjunga wetlands were surprisingly quiet, as quite dry. On the largest series of pans (SE section), c 300 Red-capped plovers, c 40 Grey teal, a few dozen Australian pratincole, 8 Royal spoonbill, 4 Australian pelicans, the odd Gull-billed tern, Caspian tern, many egrets of all sizes, Swamp Harrier, White-bellied sea-eagles, several Nankeen kestrels, several Brown falcons, many Whistling and Black kites, Forest and Sacred kingfishers.

Other birding highlights on the road south today:
Great-billed heron - flew over the highway, alighting into paperback forest in swampy section S Cardwell, N Fishers Creek
Grey goshawk (white morph) - 8.5km N Ingham, bw Seymour $& Herbert R, on power line studying cane field
Brown falcon - just S of Grey goshawk
Brahman kites - plentiful along highway stretch N Cardwell and Kirrama RangesRead more