As we headed up the mountain road to O'Reilly's Guesthouse in Lamington National Park, I wasn't that impressed. The scenery wasn't as spectacular as the Colorado Rockies or the Alps. Then we started seeing smoke ahead in the distance. The area is so dry there have been many brush fires. As we drove on, the hillsides were black with charred grass. The mountain road started to wind more and more; the drops off the side were begining to make me think of Apache Trail in Arizona. Flames licked the side of the road. At one point, the smoke from the brush fires obscured our vision so much, we couldn't see the road. Great, if we lived to the guest house, we wouldn't be able to stay because it would be so smokey. Just when we almost gave up hope, we drove into a new area of rain forest. The area became densely poplulated with trees and there was no fire. Finally at the top of the mountain, we came to O'Reilly's Guesthouse.
For hardy souls, there is camping up there also. But we chose O'Reilly's. It is famous because it has been family owned and operated for almost 75 years. They run the hotel and also various guided tours and walks and activities. Bird watchers from all over the world come to Lamington National Park. I wanted a guided bird walk so I could tell you blog readers what we actually saw this time.
Well, we saw them all. It was a good time of year for the Bower Bird. We saw both the Satin Bower Bird and the Regent Bower Bird. I was looking for this bird near our house in another blog, but this time I'm sure I saw them and I even have the pictures. The male birds build the "bower" or nest looking thing and decorate it with various items. The Regent Bower uses shiny things and shells, but the Satin Bower uses blue items. We came across one bower decorated with blue plastic bits like milk tops and blue feathers from the Crimson Rosella Parrot. The male also brings food to his bower because he has to wait around a lot. First, he has to wait and strut around for passing females and secondly, he has to protect his bower from other males that will vandalize his work. It was amazing to see in action.
Other birds we saw: Brush -turkey, Crimson Rosella Parrot, King-Parrot, Superb Fairy-wren, Red-browed finch, Brown Cuckoo Dove, various wrens, Lewin's Honeyeater, Eastern Spinebill, Eastern Yellow Robin, Green Catbird.....I could go on. One other bird that lives there is the Albert's Lyrebird. This is always talked about as "the elusive Lyrebird." The male looks like a sort of peacock and June and July are the best months here to spot him. He builds a sort of platform from vines and dances and the platform and fans his tail and does a song and dance. We saw a video about it and it looks like something to go back and try to see! However, we are almost certain we saw a female Lyre Bird run across our path on a rainforest walk at 6:30 am. one morning.
Well, this post could go on and on. Just brief note about other wildlife - we saw some little kangaroo things called pademelons hopping about. A moonlight walk brought us to a Glow Worm colony. The stars were fantastic - never seen so many in the sky. The sunsets were spectacular. Even Elliott, with his pre-teen sneering self, enjoyed the trip despite himself. He enjoyed hand feeding the birds and seeing a mullet headed skink (wierd lizard thing). We couldn't get him out of bed for the 6:30 am walk in the rain forest, but we did come across our first Funnel Web Spider web sighting. We came across a guide jiggling a small stick near the web, trying to entice the spider to come out. Luckily for me, it didn't. I'm happy to let that spider remain on our "Didn't actually see List" because it's bite is fatal without anti-venom.
This trip may have been the coolest thing I have ever done. We debated this on the way down the mountain: Bahamas, LaBrea Tar Pits, Grand Canyon...I really enjoyed seeing all the different wildlife. So many spectular birds. If any of you come to visit, you may want to look into this as one of your stops.
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