I think there are few birds more impressive than the Golden Bowerbird. First of all, it is a visually stunning bird with its gold plumage that seems to light up the rainforest when it flies through. Second of all, it builds a bower. Now, these bowers aren't like the more famous bower of the Satin Bowerbirds with their avenue and collection of blue objects. The Golden Bowerbird's bower, to me, is much more impressive. A typical bower consists of two towers about a meter high and a meter apart, each built out of hundreds of small twigs around a small tree. Between the two towers is a crosspiece that also is made of twigs. This cross piece is then decorated with a wide range of lichen and moss that the male bird collects from the surrounding forest. Now, find me a more impressive bird then that.
This amazing bird was my target for the morning. While I had already seen one on the morning I spent with Alan a couple days ago, that male was only beginning to tend his bower so a bit unpredictable and hard to photograph. Today, I had the location of an active bower that is actually rather famous and this bird probably is the most seen and photographed Golden Bowerbird by far. While Ioften try to avoid things that have been photographed over and over again, this situation was too good to pass up. After three hours at the bower, the male was around for more than two of those hours, but only on the bower for maybe a minute total on two different occasions. This gave me two chances to photograph him and while I didn't get the shot I had in mind, I am very pleased with the shots I did get as you can see from the one above.
Afterwards, I went to the Ivy Cottage Tea Room where I hoped to photograph the tame Victoria's Riflebirds that come in to share your tea with you but they were closed today so instead I decided to go for a drive. After a nice drive west of the Paluma Ranges I stopped and had a pot of tea at a small resort and talked with the guy there about my plans for the next few weeks. He suggested a new route on the backroads to the west, instead of retracing my steps to the highway on the coast and going back north before heading west. So, I changed my plans and had a lovely drive through a number of cattle stations and eventually ended up at the Undarra Lava Tubes where I am camped for the night. I am not exactly sure what a lava tube is, but from the photos, they look like a long cylindrical cave. Regardless, these are the biggest ones in the world and Iam going on a tour in the morning so can report more tomorrow.
Tomorrow Iwill be headed into Georgetown and sort of officially starting my journey through the Queensland Outback. For the next three weeks I will be in pretty remote country and won't have internet access for quite a while. Of course, I will continue to do the weblog but it probably will not be updated until the first week of November or so when I return to Brisbane. For those interested, my rough itinerary will take me from Georgetown to Mt. Isa then south to Birdsville and the Simpson Desert. I will head south on the Birdsville Track into South Australia and then back north on the Strzelecki Track into New South Wales. I will then return to Queensland through Currawinya National Park and eventually to Brisbane via Bowra Station and Eulo Bore. It should be a fantastic several weeks.
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