I have a dark confession to make. It is grant-writing season and my mind and body are prostrating themselves as I offer my humble ideas for research funding as a sacrifice to the mighty ARC (Australian Research Council). I am so busy writing grants to keep our research funded that I have had to forgo birding today. It was a calculated misdemeanour, however, as there is only one bird at large in Brisbane at the moment that I really should see, and that is the infernal Common Sandpiper at Kedron. The best tide for my next attempt on this bird is on Thursday morning this week, when there is a whopping low tide at dawn. It must happen this time, it MUST!

Several people have asked about the boundary of Brisbane, so I thought I’d go for a visual update today and put up some maps. I will show the offshore boundaries in a few weeks, once I’ve run some analyses, and I’ll also show the different ecosystems later. For now, just the cold, hard boundary. It’s so binary – you are either in or you’re out!

With no year ticks today, my year list at the end of the day remained on 210 species. I spent 0 minutes birding, walked 0 km and drove 0 km.

This is the whole of the Brisbane LGA – There is the mainland blob, the three small islands (from north to south Mud, St Helena, Green) and Moreton Island. Yes, I’m afraid you’re right, North Stradbroke Island is not in Brisbane.

And going clockwise around the border, here is the north-east.

The south-east.

The south-west.

And the north-west. The “camel’s head” (Brisbane’s answer to the Vogelkop Peninsula?) of the north-west is a pretty interesting part of the LGA. Along the ridge around Mount Glorious is the rainforest of D’Aguilar National Park. Most of the heavily birded areas, such as Maiala, Browns Road, Wivenhoe Looout, Boombana etc are outside the Brisbane LGA. There is a lot of discovery to be done inside the camel’s head.

There’s plenty of unexplored rainforest, eucalypt woodland and heath inside the Camel’s head!

Same for the camel’s chest – more than 100km of tracks wind through this area between Mount Nebo and Lake Manchester.