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Report by Kath Shurcliff, BANQ regional contact, Cooktown.
Cooktown was the location of the BANQ Easter Campout for 2010. Monsoonal rain the previous week discouraged most from attending, but 5 stalwart members from Townsville, Innisfail and Cairns made the journey up to Cooktown via the Mulligan Highway. These hardy (or was it fool-hardy?) travellers were augmented by an equal number of local birders. The original planned program was hastily redrawn to fit in with continually deteriorating roads – the further excursions were all redrawn to locations near town. Despite the continual rain, we managed to get to one gallery rainforest property on the Endeavour River (thanks to local enthusiasts Isobel and Mike), mangroves along the Endeavour River at Marton, melaleuca and eucalypt woodlands, the historic Botanic Gardens, as well as the estuary and beaches of Cooktown. We unfortunately did not manage to get to any lagoons since access was waist-deep in water, or the rainforests and wet eucalypt forests around Shipton's Flat!
Birding in the rain!
Our birding was greatly curtailed, but we did have time to enjoy the hospitality of Cooktowners and their lovely piece of paradise. And the smiles never seemed to leave our faces! We even manged to see one of the Cape York endemics – White-streaked Honeyeaters feeding on flowering banksias. We had a few welcome respites from the rain, which we took full advantage of. All in all, we recorded just over 100 species.
Lunch beside the raging Little Annan River
A complete list of all species seen at each locality visited is given below and you can download it as a pdf file here. It includes records for a small roadside lagoon, along the Mulligan Highway, approximately 50 kms southwest of Cooktown, which the “southerners” visited on their way to and from Cooktown. The information from this camp-out will be used to help update the Cooktown district species list – watch for this new addition to BANQ's brochures.
| SPECIES | Normanby Swamp | Endeavour mangroves & eucalypt woodland | Esplanade | Botanic Gardens Melaleuca & beach | Endeavour Valley road & rainforest | Kings Plains | Little Annan & Annan Rivers |
| Australian Brush-turkey | X | X | |||||
| Orange-footed Scrubfowl | X | X | |||||
| Radjah Shelduck | X | 2 | |||||
| Green Pygmy-goose | 2 | ||||||
| Peaceful Dove | X | X | X | X | |||
| Bar-shouldered Dove | X | X | X | X | X | ||
| Wompoo Fruit-dove | X | X | X | ||||
| Rose-crowned Fruit-dove | X | ||||||
| Pied Imperial Pigeon | 1 | ||||||
| Little Pied Cormorant | 1 | ||||||
| Black Bittern | 2 | ||||||
| Eastern Great Egret | 1 | ||||||
| Cattle Egret | 1 | ||||||
| Little Egret | 1 | ||||||
| Eastern Reef Egret | X | ||||||
| Eastern Osprey | 1 | 1 | |||||
| Black-breasted Buzzard | 1 | ||||||
| White-bellied Sea-eagle | 1 | 1 | |||||
| Whistling Kite | X | X | X | X | X | ||
| Brahminy Kite | X | ||||||
| Wedge-tailed Eagle | X | ||||||
| Brown Falcon | X | ||||||
| Pale-vented Bush-hen | X | ||||||
| Bush Stone-curlew | X | ||||||
| Beach Stone-curlew | 3 | ||||||
| Pacific Golden Plover | 20 | ||||||
| Greater Sand Plover | 24 | ||||||
| Masked Lapwing | X | X | X | ||||
| Comb-crested Jacana | X | ||||||
| Bar-tailed Godwit | 8 | 1 | |||||
| Whimbrel | 3 | 6 | |||||
| Common Sandpiper | 1 | ||||||
| Little Tern | 2 | ||||||
| Gull-billed Tern | 1 | ||||||
| Caspian Tern | 1 | ||||||
| Common Tern | 1 | ||||||
| Crested Tern | X | X | |||||
| Common Noddy | 1 | ||||||
| Silver Gull | X | ||||||
| Sulphur-crested Cockatoo | X | ||||||
| Rainbow Lorikeet | X | X | X | X | X | ||
| Scaly-breasted Lorikeet | X | X | X | ||||
| Red-winged Parrot | X | X | X | X | |||
| Pale-headed Rosella | X | ||||||
| Pheasant Coucal | X | X | X | H | |||
| Eastern Koel | X | ||||||
| Horsfield's Bronze-cuckoo | H | ||||||
| Little Bronze-cuckoo | H | H | X | ||||
| Brush Cuckoo | H | H | H | H | |||
| Azure Kingfisher | X | ||||||
| Laughing Kookaburra | X | H | |||||
| Blue-winged Kookaburra | X | X | X | ||||
| Forest Kingfisher | X | X | X | ||||
| Sacred Kingfisher | X | X | |||||
| Rainbow Bee-eater | X | X | |||||
| Dollarbird | X | X | X | X | |||
| Great Bowerbird | X | ||||||
| Red-backed Fairy-wren | X | X | |||||
| Lovely Fairy-wren | X | ||||||
| Large-billed Scrubwren | H | ||||||
| Weebill | X | ||||||
| Large-billed Gerygone | X | ||||||
| Fairy Gerygone | X | X | X | ||||
| White-throated Gerygone | X | ||||||
| Yellow-spotted Honeyeater | X | X | X | X | |||
| Graceful Honeyeater | H | ||||||
| Varied Honeyeater | H | ||||||
| Yellow Honeyeater | X | X | |||||
| Brown-backed Honeyeater | X | ||||||
| Dusky Honeyeater | X | X | X | X | X | ||
| White-streaked Honeyeater | X | ||||||
| White-throated Honeyeater | X | X | X | X | |||
| Blue-faced Honeyeater | X | ||||||
| Helmeted Friarbird | X | X | X | X | X | ||
| Macleay's Honeyeater | X | X | |||||
| Grey-crowned Babbler | H | ||||||
| Black-faced Cuckoo-shrike | X | ||||||
| White-bellied Cuckoo-shrike | X | X | X | X | X | X | |
| Cicadabird | X | X | |||||
| Varied Triller | X | X | X | X | |||
| Little Shrike-thrush | X | X | X | X | |||
| Australian Figbird | X | X | X | X | |||
| Yellow Oriole | X | X | X | X | |||
| White-breasted Woodswallow | X | ||||||
| Black Butcherbird | X | ||||||
| Pied Butcherbird | X | ||||||
| Spangled Drongo | X | X | X | ||||
| Rufous Fantail | X | ||||||
| Torresian Crow | X | ||||||
| Shining Flycatcher | X | X | X | ||||
| Spectacled Monarch | X | ||||||
| Magpie-lark | X | X | X | X | X | X | |
| Lemon-bellied Flycatcher | X | X | |||||
| Pale-yellow Robin | X | ||||||
| Golden-headed Cisticola | X | ||||||
| Silvereye | X | ||||||
| Welcome Swallow | X | X | |||||
| Mistletoebird | X | X | X | X | |||
| Olive-backed Sunbird | X | X | X | X | |||
| Black-throated Finch | X | X | |||||
| Red-browed Finch | X | X | X | X | |||
| Chestnut-breasted Mannikin | X | X | |||||
| House Sparrow | X | ||||||
| Australian Pipit | 2 | ||||||
| SPECIES | Normanby Swamp | Endeavour mangroves & eucalypt woodland | Esplanade | Botanic Gardens Melaleuca & beach | Endeavour Valley road & rainforest | Kings Plains | Little Annan & Annan Rivers |
