Australia: Northeast Queensland

2026/06/02: Bramston Beach, Qld

We enjoyed a short morning at beautiful Etty Bay (checkout time 10 a. m., unfortunately), during which I got a blog post issued. We then relocated to Bramston Beach to visit a cave with a colony of Common Dusky Leaf-nosed Bats. We were very fortunate to have precise directions from a local conservationist, Russ. Hiking down the beach to reach the cave, we were thrilled to find two Beach Thick-Knees! We had already tried for this bird several times without success. This large shorebird with a massive bill has a flashy flight pattern. At the cave, we found one bat roosting where we could just barely photograph it using a flashlight. Some bats flew around inside the cave, and we watched them briefly after climbing down to the entrance, but chose not to disturb them by entering the cave.

2026/06/03: Cairns, Qld

Headed out early to be at the Cairns Esplanade near high tide. But we saw few shorebirds due to season, just 5 spp and a few dozen individuals. The most exciting was a single Terek Sandpiper. Land birds included Varied Honeyeater, Torresian Kingfisher, and Mangrove Robin singing in the distance. We next walked through Les Davies Park, where there was a colony of Gray-headed Flying Foxes. After picking up some lunch, we stopped at the Cruisin depot to have the camper checked out before the Outback and ask some questions; they were very helpful. The big revelation was that the camper manufacturer does not bother to run wires from the engine compartment back to the camper so that the camper batteries can be charged (almost for free) from the alternator — unbelievable! Our last task before heading to camp was to scope out parking for tomorrow’s early boat departure.

2026/06/04: Great Barrier Reef, from Cairns, Qld

We did a fun full-day cruise to Michaelmas Cay and Hastings Reef. We snorkeled at the latter, where we saw a lovely assortment of corals and a fine selection of fish. At the cay there were four spp of seabirds engaged in breeding activities, even though the nesting season is normally in summer; these were Sooty Tern, Brown Noddy, Great Crested Tern, and Brown Booby.

2026/06/05: Cairns, Qld

We birded at Cattana Wetlands in the morning; took an early afternoon break in the heat of the day; and then visited the Rainforest Boardwalk and Centenary Lakes in the late afternoon. After a pizza dinner, we tried spotlighting and thermal imaging on the boardwalk, which was a blast; we got very good looks at Papuan Frogmouth and an incredible view of Queensland Barred Bandicoot! At both sites we enyoyed spectacular Swamp Forests, a new habitat. The palms, pandanus, and ferns growing there were marvelous!

2026/06/06: Great Barrier Reef, from Cairns, Qld

Visited Green Island today, which was a lot of fun except for the rough ride back in strong winds. We had about 55 minutes to look for Ashy-bellied White-eye at the southernmost limit of its range. Just as we needed to head back, we heard a couple of calls and tracked down two or three birds, getting very good looks! We then tore back to the dock, making a semi-submersible tour we were signed up for by about two minutes. That tour was great, with the highlight being a Black-tipped Reef Shark and many large fish approaching to within a few feet. That was followed by a glass-bottom boat tour and the return trip. We shopped for food and drove up the east side of the Great Dividing Range to camp in Davies Creek NP.  Despite wind and cold, recorded 3 bat spp there, including Eastern Long-eared Bat, a lifer.

2026/06/07: Black Mountain Road, Kuranda; Wangetti Beach, Qld

We tarried a bit in camp, enoying a gorgeous morning; a totally adorable pair of Striated Pardalotes; and several brilliant Scarlet Myzomelas. We birded a bit near Cassowary House, seeing Yellow-spotted Honeyeater well. After lunch, we walked along the shore north from Wangetti Beach Road to a rock promontory with a slot canyon. Crawling into it on hands and knees, we were ecstatic to quickly find about five cute Coastal Sheath-tailed Bats roosting on the high walls!

2026/06/08: Daintree River, Qld

Took an excellent wildlife cruise with Daintree Boatman (Murray Hunt) on the Daintree River, our target being the challenging Great-billed Heron. This we saw superbly! Despite rain, we added 7 additional trip birds, breaking 200 species, as well as seeing Saltwater Crocodile and lovely Crinum lilies, the same genus we see when canoeing in the Southeastern U. S. Afterwards we drove interminably in rain to Cooktown, but could not reach a rainforest birding site nor our intended campsite due to a ford where we deemed the water to deep to drive through.

2026/06/09: Cooktown, Qld

I used eBird last night to pick sites to bird this morning in the Cooktown area, our furthest north on the East Coast of the Cape York Peninsula. The Mount Cook Walking Track and the Botanical Gardens yielded little but Keatings Lagoon Conservation Park was excellent! After some encouragement from a local birder we met, we put in significant time and effort on forest songbirds, and found a dozen spp, including 3 lifers (none easy) and a trip bird! Then drove ca 20km past Laura on the Peninsula Development Road to look for Northern Nail-tailed Wallaby on the airstrip at Fairview Station (mislabeled Laura on Google Maps), but it has been surrounded by exclusion fencing, and we saw none. Six spp of cockatoos and parrots provided some consolation.

2026/06/10: Laura to Julatten, Qld

We searched some more for wallabies on the Peninsula Development Rd and after turning back and starting towards our next destination, found a single and a pair NW of Fairview Station! The tail is not only very long but also thick and stiff, not dropping to the ground as quickly as expected. We spent a few hours at Abbatoir Swamp before pulling into Kingfisher Park, where we will stay for three nights. We camped here in 2004, and loved it; now it is only rooms. We watched the feeders and birdbaths from the porch until dark, and then for several hours after dark in the rain. This netted us 6 trip birds and a trip mammal, including 2 lifers: Victoria’s Riflebird (rare this low in elevation) and Red-necked Crake bathing (the signature species of this site, which I saw in 2004, but Eileen did not).

2026/06/11: Kingfisher Lodge, Julatten, Qld

We spent the day on the grounds of the lodge, except for a rainy hiatus in the afternoon when I took a nap. Yellow-breasted Boatbill, Gray Whistler, and Gray-headed Robins were lifers, while Cryptic Honeyeater and Red-legged Pademelon were new for the trip. We did a several-hour night session with bat recording in the orchard and then spotlighting while walking the grounds. [We actually used to use spotlights, but now use a combination of thermal imagers, zoom flashlights, and headlamps, but still just call it spotlighting.]

2026/06/12: Kingfisher Lodge, Julatten, Qld

Birded in the morning, then spent the afternoon analyzing the many bat recordings from last night. The results were excellent, with eight species, five identified confidently (one a lifer), one tentative ID, and two unknown. In the evening, saw four Eastern Barn Owls in a nearby park, then focussed on mammals for over three hours. We had four species, two of which were rewarding chases, involving lengthy efforts tracking with a thermal imager: Chestnut Tree Mouse and White-tailed Giant Rat.

2026/06/13: Atherton Tableland, Qld, Aus

We made two stops on the way to our lodgings at Chambers Wildlife Rainforest Lodge: a park in Mareeba with gallery forest, and Nareda Tea Plantation, where we did not see tree kangaroos, but did find three White-eared Monarchs, a lifer. At the lodge had no bats at all, but four and a half hours at the viewing station, where they smear honey on two trees each night, yielded five mammal species. We had phenomenal views of our two targets, Torresian Striped Possum and Krefft’s Glider, a wonderful experience!

2026/06/14: Atherton Tableland, Qld, Aus

Today is our 40th wedding anniversary! To celebrate, we had a good lunch at a cafe, and then a wonderful dinner at Our Place Restaurant in Yungaburra. It rained most of the day, but we took advantage of this by using a thermal imager to search for tree kangaroos in rainforests at several sites. [Without sun, there was no localized heating, leaving the forest perfectly uniform in temperature, so animals would stand out better.] We did not find any, but did locate a number of forest birds this way, including lovely Pied Monarchs, Bower’s Shrikethrush, Wampoo Fruit-Dove,  and scads of Gray-headed Robins.

2026/06/15: Atherton Tableland, Qld, Aus

Pouring rain this morning, so we took advantage of our nice accommodations until checkout. Putting banana pieces on our covered balcony railings brought in, to within a few feet of us, Spotted Catbird and both male and female Magnificent Riflebirds! A hike around beautiful Lake Eacham provided brief views of two Musky Rat-Kangaroos, our target mammal here, but birds were pretty sparse.

While getting a tire with a nail in it fixed, I called the two visitor centers in the area to ask if they knew of any recent sightings of tree kangaroos, and the second one said one had been seen an hour ago at Malanda Falls. So we high-tailed it over there and quickly located it high in a tall tree, providing a good view in binoculars and the scope. We showed it to a number of people. Finishing off a day of finding difficult mammals, we saw five gorgeous Coppery Brush-tailed Possums at our campground, where an evening feeding has been done for decades.

We’ve now been in Australia for 6 weeks. Our bird list is at 232 spp. Eileen has had 34 life birds, while I have had 31. We’ve logged 42 mammals, with 34 of them lifers.