A pleasant Saturday afternoon birding near the Sustainable Living Centre - Chinderah

Ebird lists this location as The Sustainable Living Centre at Chinderah but it is really part of the Kingscliff Waste Treatment Plant. The birders tend to walk around the outside of the plant fence but I also enjoy birding along Altona Rd both before and after the plant which as Reagan was just coming out for an afternoon drive with me seemed the less muddy and more social option. There is a drainage ditch running the length of the road which seems to keep the vegetation growing on the verge a popular place for birds. This is usually a good location for Fairy-wrens, Grassbirds, and Finchs. Today we didn't see so much of what I call the scrub birds but still recorded 31 species with a fairly casual effort: Pacific Black Duck, Australasian Grebe, Spotted Dove, Bar-shouldered Dove, Dusky Moorhen, Masked Lapwing, Black-fronted Dotterel, Silver Gull, Little Pied Cormorant, Little Black Cormorant, Great Egret (Australasian), Cattle Egret, Australian Ibis, Straw-necked Ibis, Whistling Kite, White-bellied Sea-Eagle, Laughing Kookaburra, Rainbow Bee-eater, Rainbow Lorikeet, Superb Fairywren, Red-backed Fairywren, Lewin's Honeyeater, Noisy Miner, Scarlet Myzomela, Brown Honeyeater, Black-faced Cuckooshrike, Pied Butcherbird, Australian Magpie, Willie-wagtail, Magpie-lark, Torresian Crow. There were a lot of Bee-eaters on the hunt, particularly on the bend of the road. That's also where I saw the Fairy-wrens today although previously they had been all along the road hedges. There were Red-backed Fairy-wrens in amongst the Superbs so I haven't tried to ID the females. The Black-fronted Dotterel was a nice surprise. I don't see them that often and I had thought of them as shore birds but while they clearly like water, in this case a 1cm deep puddle was more than adequate for four of them. The Kite ID is still a bit uncertain but I have settled on Whistling Kite. There did seem to be two different raptors circling at the same time but I'm not sure I got a photo of the smaller raptors. NEWS FLASH 2 - The smaller birds were Whistling Kites but the larger bird turned out to be an immature White-bellied Sea-Eagle The perched photos show a marked spotting on the back of the neck feathers which would seem to be useful for ID's but I can't find a description of that for Whistling Kites. It could be a juvenile which could also explain the darker colouring. NEWS FLASH - Turns out the bird with the different looking tail was an Immature White-bellied Sea-Eagle. Thank you Roger from ebird for making the ID. The White belly and head of the Sea-Eagle is usually definitive but apparently it can take 4 years to go from brown to adult colouring so there you go. Cave Aquilam They ended up being chased off by a bakers dozen strong murder of crows so hopefully they will still be in the area next time.
	Sustainable Living Centre
	Rainbow Bee-eater
	Black-fronted Dotterel
	Superb Fairy-wren
	Whistling Kite
	White-bellied Sea-Eagle