After a moderately successful morning photographing along the mangroves, Ihad photos of both Mangrove Gerygone and Yellow White-eye (above). Iwas fairly pleased with this, but I had really hoped to photograph a White-breasted Whistler but it wasn't meant to be this morning. By midmorning, I was back on the road again and headed to Mt. Isa.
Mt. Isa is a relatively large city for being in the middle of outback Queensland. With a population of 25,000, it is one of the largest producers of copper and other minerals. Their annual rodeo is apparently also the biggest in Australia. I was after two species of birds, two grasswrens.
Grasswrens are a bit notorious among those who are interested in seeing Australia's avian life. Grasswrens are small brown birds covered in streaks. Some species have white breasts while others are simply all brown. They have long tails like fairy-wrens which are in the same family. What makes them so difficult to see is the fact that they are all ground dwelling birds and seem to prefer to run rather than fly. They all are found in the dry interior and most have relatively limited ranges making them difficult to get to. To make matters even harder, their calls are extremely high pitched and man birders are not able to hear them making it nearly impossible to find a small brown bird lurking in vegetation on the ground. There are 8 species of birds, with at least 2 subspecies that are widely accepted as full species and will be listed as such when the next list of Australian birds is published. That leaves 10 species for me to see and since they are all endemic, 10 species for me to try and photograph. It is going to be quite a challenge and Mt. Isa is my first opportunity. It all starts tomorrow.
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