Ged Tranter is one of the very best birders in Brisbane, consistently finding great quality birds, and extremely generous with information on his sightings, always doing what he can to help people connect with the birds he has found. This week was no exception on all of these counts. Yesterday he found a Crested Shrike-Tit at Lawton Road, Mt Glorious. While they are known to be in this area, and the top of Mt Glorious is probably the best single spot for them in Brisbane, it is a very difficult bird to catch up with. I therefore decided to head over there this morning, setting the alarm for 0400. Arriving at Lawton Rd at 0530 in the cool drizzle, I was neither enthusiastic nor hopeful. My pessimism was to be unfounded – about 800m down the road, as the rainforest was giving way to tall eucalypt forest, I heard the distinctive rattling call of a Crested Shrike-Tit some distance away. Try as I might I couldn’t get onto it, and after a few brief bouts of calling it fell silent. Despite 10 minutes of searching the bird had simply evaporated, and although in this binary game of year listing, it didn’t really matter, I was disappointed as they are extremely smart birds and I wanted to get visuals. A little further down the track a couple of Red-browed Treecreepers were calling, and a third bird was calling 100m or so below them, showing distantly but I couldn’t get any photos. Another good bird, restricted to high elevation forest in south-east Queensland.

The rain was really setting in now, and having got both target species in the bag I decided to do the bolt to Pooh Corner Bushland Reserve, where a small number of Musk Lorikeets had set up shop in flowering eucalypts near the main entrance. It wasn’t long before I was on at least four birds, sitting high up and showing reasonably well. Musk Lorikeet is a winter visitor to Brisbane, but highly variable in numbers fro m year to year. A good species to get in the bag just in case this doesn’t turn out to be a good year for them.

With a whopping three year ticks today, my year list rose to 251 species. I spent 1 hour 57 minutes birding, walked 3.316 km and drove 155.9 km.

Musk Lorikeet is mostly a winter visitor to Brisbane, with records peaking in May – Aug.

But they are highly variable in numbers from year to year. 2010 and 2014 were particularly good years. If they’re on a 4-year cycle, maybe 2018 will be a bumper year too…