A walk along Breakfast Creek

Day one of my latest Australian adventure saw me start off at Banks Street Reserve in Brisbane, about three kilometers north of my accommodation at Redhills. This is a small area of remnant rainforest and it holds some interesting species. From here I then followed Breakfast Creek for a few miles, before dropping down into the city for a visit to the Gabba followed by a quick schooner of ale.

When they were giving out names, the name glossy ibis had already been allocated to the "European" (actually cosmopolitan) ibis, so what to call this bird? Straw-necked ibis hardly seems to do it justice.....

I've never seen such an iridescent bird, a real stunner.

Eastern whipbird.

There are many species of parrot endemic to Australia, but in my experience so far, Rainbow lorikeet is by far the commonest, on the east coast at least.  Spectacular they may be but frustratingly difficult to see and even harder to photograph.

Masked lapwings are pretty common on amenity grasslands throughout Brisbane.

Pacific black ducks are common in city parks but they are a species in trouble. Unfortunately they hybridise with the introduced mallard.

The commonest bird around town, Noisy miner.

At Banks Street reserve there was a group of eight laughing kookaburras chasing each other around. Awesome birds!

Dusky moorhens are very common. Superficially similar to the European moorhen, they are in fact larger and lack the white streak along the flanks.

Another common town bird, Australian magpie.

Australian wood ducks.

Hardhead

Magpie-lark

Torresian crows are common throughout the city. There are many similar looking crows in Australia, but each city has it's own specialty, and often no other corvids are present. In Sydney the only corvid is the Australian raven, in Melbourne and Adelaide it's the little raven whilst in Cairns, Darwin and Brisbane the only corvid is the Torresian crow.

Walking along breakfast creek I came across a large roosting colony of grey-headed flying-foxes. I love these animals, but the locals aren't very impressed. These are the largest flying-foxes in Australia with a wing span of 1m. They are a bit noisy and smelly, but what's not to love??

We started with an ibis so lets end with an ibis. Possibly the one creature which is less popular than the flying-foxes with the locals, this is an Australian ibis. They are found throughout the city and will even walk around your tables while you are having a coffee.