Pajareo sin fronteras

I had a great time in Canberra my first 5 days in Australia, seeing where Nikki lives and  exploring   various   birding   spots . However, one of the things we were both excited about for our visit was the road trip we had planned from Brisbane down to Sydney. Winter birding in Canberra was very good, but we were looking forward to a part of Australia that wasn't bloody cold for all but a couple hours of the day.  We departed ACT the morning of June 14, taking the Tiger Air flight from Canberra to Brisbane. The journey itself was... less than fun, starting with us having to pay through the nose because our carry-on baggage was 1 kilo overweight. Though I suppose that's what we get for buying  cheap flights . When we arrived in Brisbane, we realized to our chagrin that the rental car company we were using was not, in fact, at the airport, and had to pay yet more for an Uber to the rental office. It was mid-afternoon by the time we had our car and were ...

After  Jerrabomberra  and the  Botanic Gardens , we had time to visit one more birding destination in Canberra before leaving for Queensland. There were lots of options (you could spend a year birding there and not get to all the good spots), but we ultimately decided to visit Campbell Park at the foot of Mount Ainslie, the highest point in Canberra. It was partly because it was easily accessible by public transportation and we were poor birders with no car, and partly because it had Speckled Warbler, an uncommon and near-threatened Australian endemic that's rather hard to find elsewhere. In general I tried to make this as little of a "listing" bird trip as possible, since I had very limited time and resources, but if the opportunity is there to see a difficult bird... I might as well.  Our first visit to the park was in a late afternoon, and ended up being shorter than expected, mostly because the sun in Australia sets so damn early in the wintertime (no, I am ...