Kakadu NP

In late August I spent five days in Kakadu, based in Jabiru and visiting a few major birding and cultural sites: Mamukala Billabong, Anbangbang Billabong, Burrungkuy (Nourlangie), Ubirr, Ngurrungurrudjba/Yellow Water, Bardedjilidji and Cahills Crossing.

I also thought I should take the opportunity to briefly report back against the preparation that I did for this trip. Most of these locations were in my spreadsheet and so I will just list the species that were present on at least ten per cent of July-September checklists at each place, divided into whether I saw it or whether I did not. Not particularly sophisticated I admit!

Mamukala Billabong

My actual first stop was at an information bay not far inside the entrance to the park. I only paused here for a few minutes for a sip of coffee, and the only bird I found was a sickly Torresian crow who had lost quite a few feathers.

The first major stop was at Mamukala Billabong, about 40km west of Jabiru and just off the Arnhem Hwy. There’s a short loop walk that takes you close to the billabong itself, and a very large and impressive birdhide on the northwestern edge near the carpark.

I visited Mamukala twice – on my drive into Kakadu on Wednesday 20 August, and late afternoon on Saturday 23 August.

It was very hot on my first visit, mid-afternoon, and as a consequence I didn’t see too much. It was my first stop in West Arnhem though, and so everything I did see – all of 15 species – was new to the local government area. There were magpie geese, including some juveniles, peaceful and bar-shouldered dove, a darter calling somewhere in the billabong, both azure and forest kingfishers, and some very cooperative arafura fantails and lemon-bellied flyrobins. Unfortunately my camera settings were stuffed and I didn’t get any photos here.

The second time I visited was quite a bit better. Again I mostly hung around the birdhide but saw 32 species, including LGA ticks Australian and whiskered terns hunting over the billabong, an arafura shrikethrush, and a white-breasted woodswallow. There were agile wallabies here, as well as a yellow-spotted monitor lizard, surprisingly the only one of these that I saw all trip.

Still, I missed quite a few of species I’d expect to see. There has been quite a bit of controlled burning in the north of the site, recent enough that there’s no regrowth yet – something that I learned happens pretty quickly in the territory – so perhaps that caused the absence of many of these species. Of course, I also didn’t walk the loop track, which I’m sure would have helped with seeing the frequent green pygmy-goose, pied herons and radjah shelduck.

Jabiru

The town of Jabiru is small but had plenty of things to see. Most of my birding was at the caravan park where I was staying, but I also visited Jabiru Lake (plenty of black flying foxes and not much else), the walking track to the Bowali Visitor Centre on the south side of town, and Jabiru Airport out to the east.

At the caravan park I got two lifers: rufous-throated honeyeater and diamond dove, the latter was a single individual within a large flock of nearly identical-looking peaceful doves. I saw many, many more diamonds in my stay there but the first one really made me work for it.

On Friday 22 August I visited the airport in search of partridge pigeons – both Jonathan T and somebody I met in town told me that they’re regular there. I popped by twice, at midday and late afternoon, but couldn’t find them either on the airfield or the adjacent grasslands. Back at the caravan park one of the workers said that he regularly sees them along the western boundary at dawn, though typically on the wrong side of that fence.

I checked that afternoon but didn’t find any in the park either, and either way I didn’t have a lot of confidence that I’d be able to shoot them if they could sneak out through a fence, so I went for a slow drive around town. I was able to find them fairly easily on the visitor centre walk on my second visit to it. They were skittish and the light was poor, so I resolved to return for photos the following morning.

I located them in nearly the same spot the next morning, where they walked off into the long grass and I decided to try to wait them out.

I sat there listening to the sounds of foraging, pecking, the brush of dry grass as they moved around, unseen, within a couple of metres of me. For 37 minutes I was patient in the dirt, but it was getting hotter and I was increasingly annoyed by ants, so I stood up to leave. That movement immediately flushed the birds that had been feeding near me in the grass: three brown quail, not pigeons at all. They did not know that I was there and freaked out, flying (poorly) away from me as fast as they could.

Defeated, I walked back to my car, only to find five pigeons there waiting patiently for me, willing to be incredibly cooperative – one sat within two metres of me for a good five minutes, very aesthetically obscured by a few blades of grass.

I didn’t get any other lifers in Jabiru, but there were plenty more birds around: the red-tailed black-cockatoos in particular were a constant and great presence, white-bellied cuckooshrike and yellow orioles, plenty of white-gaped honeyeaters, and one evening I counted 40 rainbow bee-eaters flying overhead, presumably to roost. I’d guess that the largest flock of these I’d previously observed was in the single digits, so this was a treat. My favourite was finding half a dozen grey-crowned babblers in the caravan park one afternoon, stripping the trees in the park for nesting material and taking it over the fence into an adjacent, undeveloped lot.

I didn’t pull any stats for Jabiru or any of the locations within it that I visited, so nothing to report here.

Anbangbang Billabong

I visited Anbangbang once, on Thursday 21 August. Initially I planned to start my day at Burrungkuy/Nourlangie but I didn’t appreciate that the rock is so large that for the first hour after dawn a lot of the area is in shadow. With that realisation I pivoted to this small freshwater billabong just a couple of kms up the road.

There were plenty of magpie geese here, both great and plumed egrets, a few white-necked heron, and many, many small flocks of both plumed and wandering whistling-ducks. A few radjah shelduck were mixed in with some wandering ducks, doing a very poor job of blending in.

I walked along the southern edge of the billabong, joined for much of it by willie wagtail and paperbark flycatchers, as well as my first rufous whistler and blue-winged kookaburra for the region.

The most exciting first was a lifer: a green pygmy-goose that shot across the billabong quite a distance away. It’s lucky that I was looking in the right direction because it was out of sight within seconds and I wasn’t able to relocate it.

Looking at the stats, I’m not surprised that I didn’t see comb-creasted jacanas here – rather, I’m surprised that they’re apparently so abundant, appearing on two-thirds of lists. I didn’t see any lilypads on my walk, nor enough water to support them, and I haven’t yet seen jacanas outside this setting. It’s fairly late in the dry, and the billabong was more like a floodplain at this point in the season, so perhaps once the rains start it will fill back up and there’ll be better habitat – but that doesn’t really explain how they’re on 65 per cent of checklists from July – September, when I’d imagine conditions are fairly similar each year.

Burrungkuy (Nourlangie)

Both of my visits to Burrungkuy/Nourlangie were fantastic, the rock art here was incredible and the sandstone escarpments incredibly impressive.

The birds, too, were very good. I visited on the morning of 21 and the afternoon of 22 August.

I got a few lifers here: quickly upon entering the site for the first time I had my first Pacific emerald dove, doing a very good job of hiding from me: it was only the hint of unnaturally deep green through the foliage that revealed it. On this trip I also had my first great bowerbird, seen briefly and again through the trees.

There were also loads of silver-crowned friarbirds () in the trees. They were so noisy and moving all across the site that I frequently couldn’t hear anything else. I didn’t report any helmeted friarbirds but I think it’s very possible they were also present. I can’t pick between the two species by call, only visually – the silver-crowned has a very angular rear edge to its facial patch, where the helmeted is more rounded – and as I didn’t attempt to distinguish every bird once I’d confirmed the presence of the lifer, it’s very possible that I overlooked the other. In hindsight that’s a mistake, both in terms of the accuracy of my lists, of course, but also because I never recorded a helmeted friarbird within West Arnhem.

On my second trip I got two more lifers here: a white-lined honeyeater and, very briefly while I was taking better (but not great) emerald dove photos, a banded fruit-dove flew overhead. Noticeably bigger than the other doves, I got only a quick glimpse at it as it moved about high in the canopy and vanished up above a shelf. Not getting a photo of the fruit-dove is perhaps my biggest regret across the trip.

Burrungkuy/Nourlangie was pigeon-central: as well as these two and plenty of peaceful and bar-shouldered doves, I also got my first sighting of chestnut-quilled rock-pigeons, a few of the chubby little things walking around on the sandstone paths returning from the lookout. These were my bird of the trip, and they were everything that I wanted them to be: squat, fat, handsome, fairly unbothered by people. My best photos came later, at Ubirr, so for now I was just happy to sit and watch them.

Perhaps the most unexpected thing that I saw across both visits was a python curled in a tree fork. I didn’t pay it too much attention beyond a single photograph, but after posting it to iNaturalist I found out that it is an Oenpelli rock python, described as the rarest python in the world and only found in the sandstone escarpments of western Arnhem Land. I also didn’t realise until processing photos later that its head is just barely visible as well.

Other interesting things here were a red-winged parrot feeding on fruit at eye level, the incredibly loud prehistoric croak of a channel-billed cuckoo as it flew overhead, and being swooped by a dusky honeyeater on both visits.

On the drive out after my first visit I very briefly stopped at Nawurlandja, a rock formation a few kilometres up the road that offers a great view back onto Burrungkuy/Nourlangie, as well as an opportunity to peer into the canopy for fruit-doves. I was unsuccesful with the pigeon, but I did hear my first and only sandstone shrikethrush. Unfortunately, I never got to see this very handsome bird.

What stands out to me in the stats is how infrequently the chestnut-quilled rock-pigeons are reported. I had in my head that it was the main site for them, and that impression was reinforced after I easily found them on my first visit, but perhaps they’re low-profile enough that they escape notice? I certainly didn’t find them on my second visit, though I also wasn’t looking too hard for them this time around.

Ubirr

I went to Ubirr on the afternoon of 21 August. Once again the rock art here was very impressive, perhaps moreso than at Burrungkuy/Nourlangie – the main gallery here in particular is great.

I didn’t get any lifers here, though did see my first red-backed fairywren for the West Arnhem region, as well as plenty of rainbow bee-eaters, sulphur-crested cockatoos and crimson finches. The terrain looked good for rainbow pitta, and they’ve been reported in the area in the past, but I wasn’t able to track any down. It was pretty quiet overall actually, likely due to it being so late in the day.

The real highlight was, again, the gorgeous chestnut-quilled rock-pigeons. I found two birds at the foot of a track up to a lookout, and they were a bit skittish at first, retreating into a crevice when they saw how interested I was, but I was able to wait them out and they came to be incredibly comfortable. One sat only a few metres away from me, out in the open, for ten or so minutes – only moving on when another user of the site got a bit too closer.

I was able to grab quite a few photos in different positions. I didn’t see them take flight at any point, so I only got a brief glimpse of the chestnut quill for which they’re named – just a hint under the right wing on the second image.

What a special bird!!

I had high hopes of finding a sandstone shrikethrush here, but didn’t manage it. There were so many perfect perches if only they’d chosen to cooperate.

On the drive back I did manage to find a lifer, purely by luck: approaching a T intersection with a gated, unnamed track off the Arnhem Highway, two woodswallows shot out of a tree and circled into the restricted reserve. I was able to safely pull over and confirm they were little woodswallows as they soared away.

Black-necked stork being recorded around a fifth of all visits to Ubirr is very odd to me. I wouldn’t have thought there was any suitable terrain for it – there’s no body of water on the site, and though the road in starts right next to the river you’re more than a kilometre away from it by the time you’re among the escarpments. Satellite view on Google Maps suggests there might be a floodplain area to the north of the site which is potentially viewable from the Nadab lookout? That’s my best guess.

I was pleased to find (and photograph) a red-backed fairywren here too, the only shots of that species that I got anywhere. It’s either a female or juvenile male, rather than a male in breeding colours, but at least it’s another pic tick.

Ngurrungurrudjba (Yellow Water)

On Friday 22 August I took a dawn cruise at Ngurrungurrudjba (Yellow Water), about an hour south of where I was staying in Jabiru. It was absolutely fantastic – a two-hour drift along the billabong with a guide (Adam) who was clearly a bit of a birder himself and was happily talking about taxonomy alongside Aboriginal hunting practices for the plumed-whistling ducks and magpie geese.

He had a good eye too – he managed to pick a distant black-fronted dotterel running along the bank at the same moment that everybody else was looking at black-necked stork, a territory tick for me.

I got a few better (but still not great) photos of green pygmy-goose here, as well as whistling-ducks, nankeen night-heron, and radjah shelduck. There were plenty of egrets, spoonbills, herons and darters spread out across the adjacent floodplains.

There were many more comb-crested jacanas here than at either Corroboree Billabong, where I also took a cruise, or at Fogg Dam, which I visited a couple of times. There was a wider mix of ages here, including some immature birds and some that can’t have been more than a few weeks old. Everything about these babies was still under development except those huge feet, and they moved about independently feeding on the lilypads.

I got two lifers here, neither of which I was able to get a photo of: a little kingfisher zipped across in front of the boat and disappeared into the mangrove, the only one of these I was able to see on my trip. The other was a rainbow pitta, which I had dipped on a couple of times already at Fogg Dam and at Ubirr, which I was able to spot digging and pouncing through the leaf litter right as we hit the end of the tour. This, I believe, may have been the single most unusual bird observation of the whole trip – less than one per cent of checklists at this location report pittas.

Crococdiles were everywhere here too – in bigger numbers than at Corroboree Billabong, where I also took a cruise, but we didn’t get any of the monstrous 5-6m individuals here.

In all I had 45 species in just over two hours, my best single-site result of the whole trip. Many of those that I didn’t see would have required a trip upriver along the South Alligator, where the river narrows and the riparian vegetation gets a lot denser – we only visited this as a demonstration of the difference between this section and the open water and floodplain where we had been travelling up to that point. I imagine, though, that this is where a lot of those flyrobin, parrot and honeyeater records are coming from.

There are two birds I wasn’t able to see that I wish I had. I’ve never seen an Australian pratincole on their summer jaunts into Victoria, so that would have been good, but even better would have been the absurd-looking great-billed heron – a bird I wasn’t able to find anywhere on my trip.

Bardedjilidji

My last day in Kakadu I went back up towards Ubirr, but rather than returning to the rock art I visited the Bardedjilidji sandstone walk and the infamous East Alligator river causeway at Cahills Crossing.

At Bardedjilidji I found a couple more lifers – black-tailed treecreeper and black-breasted buzzard, both of which I was hoping for. Both of these were local tips rather than eBird suggestions – by those metrics the location isn’t particularly good for either, but when I flagged these species with a birding tour guide I met, he suggested that he has best success for both here. I wasn’t able to photograph either one – the buzzard was a quick view through canopy and the treecreeper only an aural observation. I’m not thrilled with soaring raptor shots regardless, but the black-tailed treecreeper is an incredibly

Another bird that I found easily here but which the eBird data does not support is the rainbow pitta. On my fourth attempt with these birds I finally got a good look at one. Two of them were calling to each other constantly in a monsoon forest adjacent to the river. It wasn’t hard to locate them, and it was only about 20 minutes of sitting and waiting in the shade before one of them emerged. It was curious about me and sat for a couple of minutes. I didn’t get entirely unobstructed views – that single vine across its belly hurts me – but it was close and by far the best views of this beautiful bird I had to that point.

Otherwise here I had some peaceful and bar-shouldered doves, a green-backed gerygone, lemon-bellied flyrobin and arafura fantail in a small mixed flock, crimson and double-barred finch, a rainbow bee-eater.

I would have been very happy to catch up with the chestnut-quilled rock-pigeons here too, but couldn’t find any; ditto the sandstone shrikethrush. Bardedjilidji came at the end of my trip, but it was a good reminder that eBird is a terrific guide but that I shouldn’t rely on it too heavily. I don’t think I would have visited at all if I hadn’t been told to check for buzzards and treecreepers here, and so I would have missed out on both, as well as the pitta.

Cahills Crossing

Just a little way up the road is Cahills Crossing, a causeway across the East Alligator river that is notoriously dangerous. Even late in the dry the river current is strong, the water level can be treacherous, and there are so many crocodiles waiting just off and occasionally even on the road itself. At one point I counted 18 crocs – 16 salties, two freshies – and that’s just those that were sitting above the water. Who knows how many more were under it. They were floating there catching the barramundi that were unable to cross the causeway.

Three cars crossed while I was there. I was a bit unnverved to see a dog in the back of this ute when it reached the other side – generally uncomfortable with that practice, let alone when there are dozens of crocodiles only metres away. You get a bit of a sense of how many there were in the second half of the video.

This wasn’t really a birding stop, though I put in a checklist anyway. Striated heron was a great LGA tick, though great-billed heron was my main target here – there have been a couple reported over the preceding days, but they weren’t around when I was.

I didn’t collect any data for Cahills Crossing.

That was about it for Kakadu birding! In five days I found 101 species, 19 of them lifers, including most of my targets. I crossed into three digits on the drive back to Darwin: just after crossing the South Alligator river, I found two brolgas feeding in a shallow pond and a swamp harrier a bit further west over an attached floodplain.