Bush Stone-curlew

The Bush Stone-curlew is a large, unusual, endemic, nocturnal, ground dwelling shorebird/wader that is mostly heard when making its eerie wailing calls at night. By day it loafs and sleeps, usually in the shade of a tree, alone, in pairs, or after the breeding season, in small flocks, using its cryptic plumage as camouflage which can make them hard to find. Being ground dwelling they are particularly vulnerable to fox and cat predation.

With a wide distribution across mainland Australia they prefer open woodland and forest near watercourses and wetlands and perhaps somewhat surprisingly they can be found in urban and semi urban areas, especially on the margins, though I have even found them on nature strips in densely built up areas. 

 Recently while driving in Byron Bay, roadside temporary signage and a cordoned off area using stakes and plastic tape around a mango tree alerted me to the presence of four Bush Stone-curlews. The following photos were taken of two of the birds as they loafed/slept in the shade of the mango tree. The birds rest/sleep either standing, semi standing with legs bent at right angles at the knees or fully prone as seen in the photos.

NOTE: You can left click on any photo to open a slide show of the photos free of text or a right click enables one photo at a time to be opened in a New Tab where an enlarged version can be viewed.

Being a member of the shorebird/wader family and having very long legs the Bush Stone-curlew must have evolved in watery habitats. However it has gone bush, on an evolutionary time scale, as its name suggests and now lives a terrestrial life. A number of other endemic shorebirds have also done this, for example the Banded Lapwing and Inland Dotterel.

Pheasant Coucal - non-breeding

A previous Avithera post in December 2021 featured a Pheasant Coucal in breeding plumage – see the following photo and the link to the 2021 post below for more information and photos. 

This post shows a Pheasant Coucal in mostly non breeding plumage though there are some black feathers on the legs and lower belly. 

Coucals are sedentary and common however they are more often heard then seen given they frequent dense vegetation. The breeding season is from October to April when they can be seen in breeding plumage.

Just like the bird in the 2021 blog, this one visited our daughter’s NSW  Northern Rivers  garden where it foraged in the densely planted garden beds. As for a number of ground dwelling birds, their plumage offers good camouflage.

NOTE: You can left click on any photo to open a slide show of the photos free of text or a right click enables one photo at a time to be opened in a New Tab where an enlarged version can be viewed.

Link to December 2021 post:

https://avithera.blogspot.com/2021/12/pheasant-coucal.html

Noisy Pitta at Victoria Park Nature Reserve

Pittas inhabit rainforest habitats where they exploit invertebrates living in the leaf litter. While they may call from high in the canopy they are essentially ground dwelling birds.

We recently visited Victoria Park Nature Reserve near Alstonville in Northern NSW. This park protects one of the last surviving remnants of original rainforest known as Big Scrub. Booyong Nature Reserve near Bangalow is another similar rainforest/Big Scrub remnant. These patches are popular with birders because they are good places to find rainforest species such as Brown Cuckoo-Dove, Topknot Pigeon, Brown-capped Emerald-Dove, Rose-crowned Fruit-Dove, Superb Fruit-Dove, Wompoo Fruit-Dove, Wonga and White-headed Pigeon, Green Catbird, Regent Bowerbird, Spectacled Monarch, Black-faced Monarch, White-eared Monarch, Russet-tailed and Bassian Thrush, Paradise Riflebird and Noisy Pittas.

Being winter, Noisy Pittas have come down from higher altitude rainforest in the nearby Great Divide so it was not surprising that we soon heard the distinctive call of this bird and then found a bird foraging in leaf litter beside the boardwalk which loops through a section of the forest. 

Photographing birds in rainforest has two significant challenges. One, the birds are often heard calling high in the canopy where it is both difficult to see them and photos are near impossible, and two, on the forest floor light is very low making full open aperture and high ISO necessary to achieve reasonable shutter speeds to avoid image blurring.

The camera was set at ISO 12,800 and f5.6 and even then, shutter speeds were 1/60s and 1/100s which for a 600mm lens is really too slow. Never the less the results after culling half the shots and some sharpening were acceptable enough to post here.

NOTE: You can left click on any photo to open a slide show of the photos free of text or a right click enables one photo at a time to be opened in a New Tab where an enlarged version can be viewed.

Note the powerful thrush-like bill which is used to move leaf litter and probe underlying soil for food. The long legs, needed to walk around in deep leaf litter are buried in the litter or behind a fallen limb so are not fully visible.

An earlier post from 2021 featuring an immature Noisy Pitta in littoral rainforest beside an ocean beach at the Brunswick Heads Nature Reserve can be viewed here: 

https://avithera.blogspot.com/2021/07/noisy-pitta.html