Tinchi Tamba Wetlands Reserve 10/21--CRESTED PIGEON, BRUSH CUCKOO, TORRESIAN KINGFISHER, PALE-HEADED ROSELLA, RED-BACKED FAIRYWREN, MANGROVE HONEYEATER, MANGROVE GERYGONE, RUFOUS WHISTLER, RUFOUS FANTAIL

RED-BACKED FAIRYWREN

MANGROVE HONEYEATER

On our way to O'Reilly's we had to go back through Brisbane, so Kim stopped at the Tinchi Tamba Wetlands Reserve just outside the city so the whole day wouldn't be spent just traveling. Yet another honeyeater was our target here and following Zirlin's 2nd law of birding, it didn't look like we'd get it, but after having given up, Kim found a MANGROVE HONEYEATER in, where else, a mangrove along the river.

But the highlight bird for me was the RED-BACKED FAIRYWREN pictured above. It was our 3rd fairywren of the trip. Fairywrens were one the cohort of birds that captured my imagination when I was looking through the field guides to Australia, so I was happy to get great looks at these little beauties.

We also cleared up a nomenclature problem. We found a large kingfisher which Kim identified as a Collared Kingfisher. However, nowhere on eBird was this name available. By process of elimination, it seemed to be a TORRESIAN KINGFISHER, but it wasn't until I got on Google and found that the species had been recently split that the mystery was solved. "Torresian" is a very big adjective for birds in Australia, referring to the narrow Torres Strait which separates Papua New Guinea from the York Peninsula and is a favored migratory route.

PALE-HEADED ROSELLA

Two other life birds sandwiched our time at Tinchi Tamba: before we got there we stopped for a PALE-HEADED ROSELLA that Kim espied on the highway, though we got a much better look at the wetlands itself. Then, just outside Brisbane's city center in a section called Bald Hills we pulled off to the side of busy road to get some quick looks at CRESTED PIGEONS, another bird that caught my eye in the field guide. Unfortunately, I couldn't get any decent pictures in the brief time we had to stop because the birds were behind a wire fence and my camera insisted on focusing on the fence instead of the pigeons.
28 species
Australian Brushturkey 1
Bar-shouldered Dove 1
BRUSH CUCKOO 1
Gull-billed Tern (Australian) 1
Little Black Cormorant 1
Great Egret 1
White-faced Heron 1
Little Egret (Australasian) 1
Striated Heron 1
Straw-necked Ibis 1
Royal Spoonbill 1
Whistling Kite 1
Forest Kingfisher 1
TORRESIAN KINGFISHER 1 near hide
Sacred Kingfisher 1
PALE-HEADED ROSELLA 1 near hide
RED-BACKED FAIRYWREN 2
Yellow-faced Honeyeater 2
Noisy Miner 2
MANGROVE HONEYEATER 1 mangrove
MANGROVE GERYGONE 1
Australian Magpie (Black-backed) 3
Gray Shrikethrush 1
RUFOUS WHISTLER 3
Olive-backed Oriole 1 at crossroads of trails
RUFOUS FANTAIL 1
Magpie-lark 1
Torresian Crow 3