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.