Queensland – WanderingEagles – Travel & Photography

Girraween National Park

Published on October 26, 2018October 26, 2018 by Anthony and Stephanie2 Comments

The Yellow-tufted Honeyeater. A very common bird in the Park

Yellow-striped Hunter (Austrogomphus guerini) — The Yellow-striped Hunter Dragonflies are out and about at the moment, however their numbers along with other Dragonfly species, are very low.

There were quite a few lizards around today, including this Jacky Lizard

Well we are all set up at the Caravan Park in Stanthorpe now and will be starting the Apple thinning again next week. It’s ridiculously hot for this time of year, 30 degrees today, hard to believe. I guess we are in for a scorcher this summer.

Today we visited Girraween National Park , always one of our favourite parks, with a gorgeous rocky river, lots of rock pools, a huge rocky pyramid to climb and plenty of walking trails, you certainly can’t get bored in this beautiful place in nature. We saw lots of lizards, heard plenty of birds but for some reason we never get many bird photos here. A few dragonflies are also starting to appear which makes Anthony very very happy. He can spend hours stalking one just to get that perfect photo of a perfect pose on the perfect prop and of course with a perfect background.🤩🤩

We saw 3 Red-bellied black snakes but boy are the quick, we didn’t get any photos but I got a little snippet of one on my video, he was swimming and ducked under a rocky ledge, I wonder how long they can hold their breath because we sat there for ages waiting for him to resurface. Maybe he found a little tunnel through the rocks and made his escape. They are a beautiful snake to watch, very timid, if they see you they are pretty quick to get away.

Granite : a strong feature in this Park

It was difficult Photographing the birdlife today, they were very uncooperative

This is a Common male Archtail Dragonfly

Yellow-tipped Tigertail Dragonfly - Choristhemis flavoterminata

Fairly slim pickings in the Odonata (dragon/damselflies) department

A nice variety of reptiles were spotted today

Some snippets from Girraween

So this is most likely our last big outing for a while. I guess we do have time off around Xmas but it would be pretty hot at that time and once we get into work mode we don’t seem to do much else. At the Apple orchard where we work, there is a huge lake with all sorts of birdlife visiting, Anthony sometimes goes there on our days off so we will still post some photos and of course our weekly inspirational quotes. Plus there is a very cute river in town where we also see lots of birds and dragonflies so we will still be doing occasional blogs of the amazing critters that we see when out and about. Please enjoy the pics and video.

Bye for now,

Steph and Anthony.

Further pics of this outstanding Park

Killarney to Goomburra

Published on October 23, 2018October 23, 2018 by Anthony and Stephanie3 Comments

We were visited by a gorgeous flock of Musk Lorikeets at Goomburra.

Dagg & Queen Mary Falls

Interesting monuments at Killarney

Hello Everyone,

The last couple of days have been great, good weather which also enabled us to get some much needed maintenance work done to the van. It’s hard to believe we are only now tackling some jobs that were on our must do list 5 months ago when we first left Stanthorpe🙄🙄 We still have a week before starting work again so will try a little harder to get things done.

Yesterday we re visited Queen Mary Falls, it’s such a wow place, I don’t think I could ever get sick of walking around the falls circuit, there’s really something magical about this place.

King of the pond, at the base of Queen Mary Falls

More birds from our second visit to the Falls

Our second visit to the Falls

Bell Birds aka Bell Miners seem to dominate the Goomburra section of The Main Range

Other birds of Goomburra

click or press on image for larger view

Today we managed to get up extra early and take a drive out to the Main Range National Park . This park is enormous and so many great parts to it but we went to the Goomburra Section about 45 minutes drive from Warwick. We had been there once before but it was in winter and today it was just beautiful after the rain they have had , it’s so nice and green and all the creeks are running. The drive there is nice too, lots of cattle and horse studs, beautiful country quite some kms before even getting to the park. It seems it’s calving and foal time, we saw so many gorgeous little baby animals, always a treat for me. I filmed one of the mares with her new foal,just beautiful to watch, it’s at the end of my video. The birdlife in the park was fantastic, soon as we got out the truck we could hear so many different birds and the Bell Miner birds were so loud. There’s a few walks here, we didn’t take any lunch so only did a small walk around Dalrymple Creek which was really nice. Next time we will definetly pack a picnic and make a day of it but we really had to do some shopping today as well so had to come back early.

A newly emerged (Teneral) Arrowhead Rockmaster Damselfy

Crazy Metalart on way too Goomburra

Goomburra

Tomorrow we have the big trip back to Stanthorpe. It’s only about 40 minutes drive. Work is looming, we are trying to delay it as long as possible, holidays are really hard to give up. There’s a couple of really nice National Parks south a bit so we are hoping we have time to visit those. Enjoy all the amazing pics and 2 videos this time.

All the best,

Steph and Anthony.

Canungra – Warwick (featuring Queen Mary Falls)

Published on October 19, 2018October 19, 2018 by Anthony and StephanieLeave a comment

Queen Mary Falls, Main Range NP. Queensland

Azure Kingfisher captured over Canungra Creek, Canungra Queensland

Some critters from Canungra (click or press image for larger view)

Well thanks anyway but I guess all that finger crossing didn’t help us. We ended up at the Canungra Showgrounds for 4 days pretty much just sitting in the rain. In fact it seemed like most of the heavy rain was making a beeline straight for us so any outings to the Lamington Ranges was definetly out and we just sat there watching the grounds slowly turn into a lake. Riveting.😳😳 We did grab our brollies a couple of times and walk into the town, this is a beautiful picturesque place normally and thankfully the rain turned a bit more patchy on our last day so we could at least pack up the awning while it was dry. We also walked around the Showgrounds which backs onto a very nice creek that was fairly flowing with all that rain. We saw a couple of ducklings caught up in the raging torrent, we couldn’t do anything to save them, they sped by so fast, the parents were flying over quacking like crazy, we just hope they all met up again a few miles down the river where the current hopefully eased off a bit. Horrible, we never think of the animals getting caught up in this torrential rain and the rivers rising so rapidly.

Noisy Friarbird, Durikai State Forest, Warwick Region

Some other birds sited at Durikai State Forest

We have been in Warwick a couple of days now and the days have been good, very cloudy and ripper storms coming through in the afternoon, but the worst ones have just skimmed past us like we have a magic shield on so we hope that continues. There’s a lot of hail, big winds and torrential rain around.

We found a nice little Billabong at Durikai State Forest just west of here towards Karara. The birds were chirping like crazy, it really lifted our spirits, so many honeyeaters there but they were very wary of us. We were very quiet and sneaky but they were on to us and soon as we got near them they flew off to another part of the Billabong. One of those collapsible bird hides would have been great here.

This was a tough selfie. Had to tie the camera to a tree branch and scramble back down in the allotted 10 second timer 😳

Queen Mary Falls, Killarney Queensland

Click or press on bird for larger view

Leslie Dam, The Billabong & Queen Mary Falls

‘A Dragon in the mist’ A young Eastern Water Dragon at the base of the Falls

More Eastern Water Dragons

Today we drove to Queen Mary Falls, about 40 minutes drive east. We have been there many times and it’s a fantastic place. The afternoons always seem better there as the sun is on the waterfall and today was a lot of birds out and about and so many of the Water Dragons. I just love them, each one is different depending on how they are camouflaged so Anthony got some great photos and I got some great video of two squabbling over something…maybe the best rock to view the falls from😁😁

It’s one of our favourite places to visit. Please enjoy the pics and video,

Cheers Steph and Anthony.