Month: September 2025

Image

Searching for Perry

If the cassowary was number one on my bird wishlist, a monotreme topped my mammal wishlist. A unique creature only found in one place in the world: the eastern coastal region of Australia.

This is Ornithorhynchus anatinus, the platypus.

Before I left for Australia, my guide hinted that we might have a chance for platypus in the way that most nature guides don’t overpromise what they can’t control while giving you real hope of the possibility of seeing a sought after species in the wild.

I brought with me my good luck platypus in giving me extra luck in seeing this sought after species.

Our search was conducted at Peterson Creek in Yungaburra, North Queensland.

A platypus interpretive sign on the banks of the creek. We must be in the right place.

Out guide told us to look for small bubbles at the surface as we walked along the creek. This was a sign that a platypus was foraging under the brown turbid water. The platypus would come to the surface for a breath of air. It would be at the surface for 10 to 15 seconds and this was the best time to see Australia’s mammalian oddity before it dove down to continue foraging.

Walking along the creek looking for tell tale bubbles.

Now platypus lore says that the best time to see this aquatic mammal is at dawn and dusk. So why were we at the bank of the creek in early afternoon? According to our guide, we had a good chance of seeing platypus on this stretch of creek at any time of day. Platypus spend a lot of the hours of the day foraging for food. And that is the best time to see them.

It did take long before we saw small bubbles rising to the surface and followed shortly by the platypus itself. The amazing mammal stayed at the surface for about 20 seconds before diving down to forage.

We spent about 20 memorable minutes with the platypus, getting excellent looks and photos.

A platypus in the wild!!
Image

Bowerbirds

Australia is home to ten species of bowerbird and I saw half of them.

Bowerbirds themselves are a beautiful and varied group of birds. What makes them well known around the world is the bowers that the males build to attract females. And we thought humans are the only artists on the planet.

All the bower designs are different depending on species and each female of the species seems to be attracted to different colors. For instance, female satin bowers birds prefer blue while great bowerbirds go for white and light gray.

Female satin bowerbird prefers blue decorations like her eye color.

Once the bower had been constructed, the male finishes the bower off with decorations purloined, or foraged, by the male. Many of the decorations are human made plastics.

I was able to see and sketch two bowers on my Australian trip. Bowers constructed by the male golden and great bowerbirds.

I was in Australia during their winter and so it was out of breeding season but some bowers remain standing year round.

One such bower was in a cemetery and our guide showed us the bower of the great bowerbird.

The great bowerbird paints in a palette of whites and grays including a set of plastic toy handcuffs.

I did a spread about the bower and the bird that created it (featured sketch).

Our next bower was in the rain forests of north Queensland at an elevation above 2,000 feet.

We hiked up a short way to the bower. But we also wanted to see the male that the bower belonged to. This required waiting.

This is a where being a sketcher has its advantages. Waiting means, “Time for a sketch!”

I sketched the impressive bower that was constructed of two tall towers. In the off season, the bower was a work in progress with one tower being about five feet high and the other was under construction. Between the towers was the “stage” lined in green moss.

Now we had to wait for Australia’s smallest and most sought after bowerbird.

After about 15 minutes, I saw a flash of gold cross from left to right which caused me to write a haiku:

A bower waiting

Flash of gold across the bow 

Leaves us wanting more

The bower bird flew into a tree out of view, in this case the North Queensland endemic golden bowerbird.

In the darkness under the rainforest canopy I realized another benefit of field sketching, you don’t need a lot of light to sketch but as my shifty photos of the bowerbird proves, you need light to paint with light.

A blurry photo of the male golden bowerbird.

After another wait, the male bowerbird returned to his bower with some green moss to cover his stage. The group all got great looks at this most sought after Queensland endemic.

Image

North Queensland Birds

I took a five day birding tour of North Queensland with FNQ (Far North Queensland) Nature Tours.

We would be visiting the world’s oldest rainforest and the Tablelands. I was here to explore Australia’s natural world with my five other travelers: three Melburnians and two Kiwis. Our guide was a local from Cairns.

We stayed two nights each at birding lodges in the rainforest. They reminded me of similar ecolodges I’ve stayed in in Costa Rica, Panama, Ecuador, and Brazil.

My favorite was Kingfisher Lodge run by an English expat. My back door opened out onto a patio that faced the forest and the feeders. This was a great way to do some chair birding and sketching.

This view is the self-portrait sketch that is featured in this post’s featuring sketch. The local brush-turkeys (named Christmas as in Christmas turkey) and orange footed megapodes named George and Mildred and featured in the mid ground.

At the other birding lodge, a huge bird to see is Victoria’s riflebird, one of Australia’s three birds of paradise and my first. The male selects a high stump to use as a stage to display. This being winter we saw a male flying to its stage without displaying.

Image

Searching for the Dinosaur Bird

The bird that topped my wishlist for North Queensland (and Australia) is the southern cassowary (Casuarius casuarius).

The southern cassowary is a large flightless bird and the second largest bird Down Under only beaten by the emu. It forages on fallen fruit on the rainforest floor. It is a rather docile unless you try to hunt one. The lit lives up to its moniker: Murder Bird!

There are two known instances in which a cassowary has attacked and killed a person. One was a young boy in Australia, who was attempting to hunt a cassowary , the other was a 75-year-old man in Florida (proof that cassowaries don’t make good pets).

How hard can it be to find a large flightless bird in the rainforest? Turns out, pretty hard.

Signs for cassowarys are everywhere in North Queensland. Their images appear on murals, billboards, tour vans, and postcards. But finding one takes sweat (easy in a humid rainforest), perseverance, and patience.

Cassowary skeleton at the Australian Museum.

We first tried for this much sought after bird by walking the boardwalk through Daintree National Park at the Marrjda Botanic Walk. We walked the boardwalk looking and listening for the Dinosaur Bird parting the vegetation with its massive casque or battle helm!

Unfortunately, Bigbird’s angry uncle didn’t show. So we headed out to bird in other parts of the National Park, vowing to return for another try in the afternoon.

A few hours later we returned to the parking lot and as we pulled up, we were told that a Cassowary was on the roadside!

We quickly geared up and sped-walked down the road to where there was a line of people looking down the road. But we could not see the cassowary. We were told the bird had wandered into the forest.

A few seconds later she returned to the grassy roadside. It was a she, in cassowarys, the females are larger and our guide recognized the bird by her casque size and shape. It was cassowary known as “Molly”.

Why couldn’t the cassowary cross the road?

She was trying to cross the road but the mass of people was preventing her from doing so. We all got good looks but “Molly” eventually retreating into the forest to wait it out until the crowds dispersed.

We were lucky enough to not have one cassowary encounter but two.

Our second Cassowary was seen in Mt. Hypipamee National Park, resting just off the trail. This bird was much younger than “Molly”, our guide estimated that this bird was about five years old.

In the young bird’s wandering it headed straight towards me. I stepped aside like a slow motion matador of peace and the bird crossed the path and heard down the bank to the creek.

Corvidsketcher watching a cassowary cross the road.

I watched the cassowary wanted down the hill to the creek where it stood in the cool water and drank. This was a great experience spending some time with the young Murderbird.

Image

Daintree River Cruise

On day one of my North Queensland birding tour with FNQ Nature Tours I was picked up at my hotel in Cairns at 6:30 AM and met my fellow travelers: three Aussies from Melbourne and two Kiwis and our local guide James.

About forty minutes later we arrived at the banks of the Daintree River.

In case you didn’t know, saltwater crocodiles are the big draw on the Daintree.

While we were sure to see crocodiles, our main focus was on the avian life.

We departed from the dock and headed across the Daintree and went up a creek in search of Australia’s smallest kingfisher, the appropriately named little kingfisher.

On the way there, our guide pointed out a small salty resting on the bank.

A small salty, perhaps a year old.

We peered down every small tributary and every low hanging branch. While everyone had their bins focused on the tributary on the port side, I peered over to the starboard and there it was, perched on a limb over the creek.

A little kingfisher photographed at the Botanical Garden in Cairns.

After getting more looks at the little kingfisher, we headed back to the Daintree to see bigger crocs.

The king of the crocs on this stretch of the river is a large male with three teeth named “Scarface”.

The three-toothed dominant male of the stretch of the river: “Scarface”.

After getting looks at “Scarface”, we headed up another small creek to get a look at a resting female.

Our most interesting sight of the morning, and one our guide had never seen, was an interloping male carrying a bloated feral pig across the Daintree.

Feral pigs, as in parts of the United States, are a major problem in Australia. They eat and destroy crops and destroy native habitats. The open season for hunting pigs is year round. It is assumed this is how a feral pig made it into the river and into the jaws of a hungry male salty.

Image

Continuous-Line Sketching Part 2

As I headed into the southern hemisphere, I continued on with continuous-line sketching, this time my journals were turned to subjects Down Under.

I found plenty of great subjects in Sydney. Perhaps none better than the curving sails of the Sydney Opera House (featured sketch).

I also sketched one of the most historic buildings in Sydney, the Hyde Park Barracks (1819). This building dates back to the city and countries founding as an English convict colony.

Hyde Park Barracks is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The brick structure was designed by convict-architect Francis Greenway and built between 1811 and 1819. The building’s original use was as a compound to house convicts and now is a wonderful museum revealing the building’s long and colorful history.

I found a bench, opened by panoramic sketchbook, and let my pen do the dancing. It was a wonderful meditation on such a core building in Australia’s history.

Image

Rambling in the Blue Mountains

I caught the 6:53 train from Sydney Central Station to Katoomba, gateway to the Blue Mountains.

I really didn’t have solid plans, just a day trip with hiking, nature loafing, birding, and sketching. And these could happen in any order.

Central Station is a five minute walk from my digs and it was already buzzing with weekday commuter bustle. I was a little early so I sketched my train at Platform 7.

After a two hour train ride (which I birded along the way) I detrained in Katoomba and walked down the high street toward Echo Point.

This is an extremely popular place to view the vast sweep of the Blue Mountains and the limestone monoliths know as the Three Sisters (certainly the Blue Mountains poster children).

Although it was 9:30, there were a flock of people here already and I felt a tour bus (or three) was about to arrive any minute so I headed out to the trails, a sure fire method for decreasing the masses.

As soon as I was on the trails it seemed I had the National Park to myself. Here I heard the birds and experienced a new fauna and flora. Like what were those plumb greenish looking birds flying across the trail (more about them later).

I headed to an overlook and heard the loud but distinctive calls of the superb lyrebird, the poster bird of the Blue Mountains.

The avian star of the Blue Mountains and a Sir David Attenborough favorite: the superb lyrebird!

I then back tracked and went to another viewpoint of the Three Sisters. I was at the top of the Giant Staircase. It was over 800 steps down to the valley floor. The steep stairway was constructed in 1909, hewn out of sandstone with sections made of metal stairs.

At this point I had to decide if I was going all the way down and hike another two to three hours to Scenic World. This was really a way to avoid the masses. I swear I could hear another tour bus arriving at Echo Point! Why not, I thought as I took my first step.

One of the Three Sisters at the top of the Giant Staircase. I think this is Madge. Only 788 more steps to go.

As I took the first flight of steps I passed a young lass who was butt-scooting down one trend at a time. “You’re brave,” she commented. “Or stupid,” I replied.

I guess I’d soon know the answer if I didn’t roll an ankle or fall to my death before I reached the last step.

This warning is no joke, these steps are step and don’t meet OSHA standards.

I finally made it to the end of the Giant Staircase with my quadriceps and calves burning (They were still burning after three days giving me the gait of a person 25 to 30 years my age!)

I rambled through the forest with the sandstone cliffs rising above through the gum trees.

And those plumb green birds? They were another Attenborough favorite: the satin bowerbird.

Image

Circular Quay

Circular Quay is the epicenter of Sydney. This is where the First Fleet landed in 1788 and established first settlements at the Rocks.

Today it is a bustling transit hub bringing together trams, trains, and ferries. And bookended by two iconic architectural masterpieces: the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Opera House.

I first became aware of the quay in Eric Bogle’s antiwar song, “And the Band Plays Waltzing Matilda”. The song is narrated by an Australian man who fights in World War I in the battle of Galipoli, where he loses both legs. Here are a few verses:

And when the ship pulled into Circular Quay
I looked at the place where me legs used to be
And thank Christ there was no one there waiting for me
To grieve and to mourn and to pity 

And the Band played Waltzing Matilda
When they carried us down the gangway
Oh nobody cheered, they just stood there and stared
Then they turned all their faces away

On some days a massive cruise ship is docked in the Quay. On my visit there was a Princess Cruise ship disgorging its many passengers and their equally massive bits of luggage.

I was going to take the ferry to Manly after my Opera House tour. Before the tour, as a light drizzle puddled the pavement (it is winter after all), I sat under an umbrella at a cafe and sipped a cappuccino and started to sketch the view of the Quay before me (featured sketch).

The size of the cruise ship almost blots out the Sidney Harbour Bridge. When you are on the starboard side of the ship while it is at the terminal, the size of the floating city completely blots out the Opera House. I somehow wanted to convene it’s massive, eclipsing size in my sketch.

The view from the stern of the ferry leaving Circular Quay to Manly is hard to beat.