Black-breasted Button-quails, Ground Parrots and the untickable King Quail

 This weekend I travelled to Brisbane in order to find and photograph the Black-breasted Button-quail in an attempt to get closer to achieving my goal of 700 bird species on my Australian Life List. I was fortunate to have a helpful and generous friend, fellow Bushpea photographer Geoff who allowed me to stay with him and his lovely wife.

After only 4 hours sleep we travelled the 3 hour journey to Inskip Point and searched for a few hours.
It is amazing to think this bird chooses to live in this location with so many noisy people trashing the place!

 

 

 

 

Platelet - the marking made by Button-quails when feeding!  They lower their bodies onto the ground then move around using their feet to search for food which forms this pattern. This one is fresh, no leaves have blown back into the space.

This Lace Monitor climbed the tree to find a feed

 

 

Finally we spotted the bird, but only briefly - typical for  this  elusive species it came out of the undergrowth silently but within 5 seconds it had disappeared again.  After the initial unsatisfactory view I sat on a log with another birder, Deane in the hope we could get a better view. With the pressure to tick a lifer now off we could relax and enjoy the experience of trying to improve our photos. Amazingly within a minute the bird decided to come right out in the open and cross a track in front of us! Brilliant!

Sincere thank you to Geoff for assisting me to find this bird!!

Black-breasted Button-quail

Geoff and I then headed off and we travelled to Cooloola Way to look for King Quail which was my other target species. We had 2 views  of them that afternoon and although we know they were King Quail sadly they were not tickable views. Frustrating, but at least I have a reason to return there now!

However we were lucky and got crippling views of Eastern Ground Parrot while searching the heath for the quails! Geoff was stoked as this was a lifer for him!

Eastern Ground Parrot

 

 

Eastern Ground  Parrot

 

 

Eastern Ground Parrot

A very happy Geoff after his LIFER!

 

Sunset over the Ground Parrots & King Quails

A couple of hours on Sunday morning at Mt Glorious resulted in great views of Green Catbird which are one of my favourite bird species!

Green Catbird

 

This Land Mullet was over 2 feet long! One of Australia's largest Skinks.

A couple of hours birding this morning on my way to the airport provided great views of the highly elusive Pale-vented Bush-hen in a creek which was a lovely way to end a weekend!

Pale-vented Bush-hen

 

 

Pale-vented Bush-hen

 

 

 

Sacred Kingfisher