I’ve never seen a Black Bittern in Brisbane, despite trying many times at Sandy Camp Road Wetlands. Michael Daley had one yesterday at Mookin-Bah Reserve in the south-east suburb of Ransome. There is a regular bird present at this site, and I had been meaning to go birding there for a while. Michael gave me a few tips, and I set off for a dawn attempt on the bittern. I walked up and down the creek that fringes a nice melaleuca swamp, and had several interesting birds including a juvenile Nankeen Night-heron, 2 Latham’s Snipe, a Pale-vented Bush-hen and a calling Lewin’s Rail. The rail was a year tick, which was nice. Black Bittern was a notable omission of course, but there is a large area of melaleuca swamp that the bird could easily disappear into, and there were a few Intermediate Egrets and Royal Spoonbills flushing that might have scared it off before I saw it. Clearly this is an area that will repay further investigation, and being only 10 minutes from my house it’s an easy dawn trip and I can still be back in time for the kids’ morning routine.

In the afternoon we went shopping on the north side, and I left the family waiting in the car for 10 minutes as I searched for Common Sandpiper at Kedron Brook near the Nudgee Road bridge. It was a neapish low tide and there was very little mud exposed and even less Common Sandpiper exposed. This is getting personal – surely one of these times I’ll bump into it????!!!

With one year tick today (Lewin’s Rail), my year list clicked up to 206 species. I spent 1 hour 53 minutes birding, walked 3.542 km and drove 20.4 km.

Pale-vented Bush-hen, Mookin-Bah Reserve, 27th Jan 2018