I have finally got around to writing up a trip report for my trip to Iron Range and various parts of NSW and Qld (a long family holiday) from late last year. In the end I recorded 345 species (274 in Qld and 131 at Iron Range). The trip report is very long (40 pages) and I have it in Word and PDF if anyone is interested. I have copied the ‘Introduction’ page below to give an indication of the information contained. I also have a spreadsheet that includes the daily lists (in order) for the entire trip as a separate document. There were a number of people that helped with this trip and there were a few I said that I would catch up with that I didn’t – thanks and apologies to all of them. Let me know if you would like a copy. Cheers, Peter
In November and December of 2011, I embarked on a major trip through parts of NSW and Queensland. The main goal of the trip was a week of banding at Iron Range National Park (NP) on Cape York but to do this I had to get the family to Sydney so they could stay with my in-laws. Given the proximity to Christmas, following the two weeks in Queensland I then proceeded to travel up the north coast of NSW to spend a week at my parent’s place near Murwillumbah, stopping at a few spots along the way to break up the trip. We then travelled to Brisbane where I visited my sister for a few days before making the long drive back to Mildura over three days (travel was generally slow as we left home with a three month old who needed regular feed stops).
This was my fourth trip to Iron Range (1994, 1999 and 2002) and I travelled most of the far north Queensland (FNQ) leg with John Rawsthorne and Stuart Rae (both who had also been to Iron Range once before) and my father, John. We had just over two weeks starting from Cairns and although I had a few target subspecies that I had missed on previous trips, the main goal was to try and get as many new species as possible for my father as he hadn’t travelled much in this part of the world. My secondary goal was to try and get to 400 species for my annual list, which I had only achieved on three occasions in the past twenty years (two of these being on previous Cape York trips). The second leg of the trip was more of a family holiday, including early Christmas celebrations, but I did manage to get some bird-watching and my parent’s place does have a lot of species within walking distance. In the end I recorded 345 species, with 72 new species for Dad (one of which would have been new for me), four new subspecies and an annual total of 433 (second only to 2002 with 464).
As usual, the first part of this report will show the daily itinerary of the trip and the second part each species with various details on where they were observed. The itinerary will include where we travelled, any places of interest on the way, any species of interest for the day and a series of numbers representing the number of species for the day/the number of new species for the day/the cumulative total for the trip/and the cumulative total of new species for the year (starting at 260). The species section will have the common name and scientific name of the species (I use a hybrid taxonomy list from Christidis & Boles and Schodde & Mason) and specific notes on where we first found the species (and for interesting species/sightings other details) and a string of numbers indicating the first day seen/the number of days seen/the trip number (and for the relevant species the trip number for the FNQ leg)/and finally the number for my annual list (again only relevant if above 260). I have split the species accounts into two paragraphs with details for FNQ (in red) and the rest (NSW) so if readers are specifically interested in one or other parts they can filter the relevant section. At the end will be a number of species that others saw that I did not track down with information on their location.
Finally, I have to thank a few people for their input to the trip. Thanks to John, Stuart and Dad for making the Cape York leg of the trip. To Jon Coleman, who organised the permits to allow banding at Iron Range and for making the few of us that camped feel welcome and to Mark Clayton who said it would be his last trip and had serious vehicle problems so has vowed to return. To Sue Shephard for her time at ‘Artemis’ and Del Richards and Chook Crawford for a great day up Mt. Lewis. To everyone from Birding-Aus who provided information particularly on Cooktown (Martin Cachard, Kath Shurcliff, Frank Pierce) and a desperate attempt to fill some holes around Brisbane (Steve Murray, Peter Boyd, Tom Tarrant and others) – I also used the archives extensively plus notes collated before and after my previous trip in 2002. And finally my wife Cate and family for allowing me to make the trip up north and allowing me the odd moment to escape at other times – travelling with three kids under five can be interesting but we made it without too much yelling.
===============================
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send the message: unsubscribe (in the body of the message, with no Subject line) to: birding-aus-request@vicnet.net.au
http://birding-aus.org ===============================
