I arrived at the Daintree River as the light was beginning to fail.
The River is quite wide where the road crosses but there isn't a bridge; ...
... just a ferry:
Although the ferry was still running, I decided to stay on the south of the river and head to Daintree Village in the hope of getting a space for the campervan at the campsite. By the time I arrived, it was as good as dark, and like many campsites, not at all obvious where I could find someone to ask. I was just about to give up and leave when someone that I'd spoken to briefly at Mossman Gorge arrived: he was staying on the campsite and on his way to see the owner, so I went with him. I waited patiently while he finalised some details of a day trip that the owner had booked for him. I wanted to go on an early morning birding trip on the river, and had assumed that it was impossible to arrange anything at this late stage for the morning, but here was my chance. So after I'd arranged a site for the van, I asked about trips. In small communities, people are often keen to direct business to others, and the poor tourist trade this year helped. One phone call and it was all booked: I needed to be at the jetty a few minutes walk down the hill at 6.30 in the morning. It wasn't until I got there that I discovered that once again I was the only person on the trip and would be getting a personal service.
Daintree Village is about 10 kilometers upstream from the ferry crossing, and the river is a good deal narrower there.
Like most bird guides, 'Sauce' (his surname was Worcester) knew what to find where, and since it was the breeding season, we visited several nests. The birds seemed much less disturbed by us nosing in in a small open boat than they would have been had we approached on foot. The first nest we visited belonged to a pair of brown-backed honeyeaters: not the most colourful of birds (nor the best of photos), but a beautiful example of the hanging nests that many tropical birds construct over water to maximise protection from predators.
Sauce didn't just know where to find birds, although I have to admit that even though we were only a few feet away, it took me some time to spot this green tree snake:
One of the other nests that we saw belonged to a species that I had really hoped to see in Australia, but was not expecting to see sitting in a nest up a tree over a river. The frogmouths, of which there are several species in Australia, are related to the nightjars. Nightjars hawk at night for insects, such as moths, and nest on the ground. I'd assumed that frogmouths did much the same. In fact, they're voracious predators, hunting from a perch, and much more similar to owls than nightjars in their feeding habits. And they build flimsy looking twig nests up trees:
It's difficult to get an idea of scale, but this is the Papua frogmouth - the largest species - which is 50-60 cm in length (that's 20-24 inches in old money). The tip of the beak is up to the right, and the photo shows how broad the beak is. The jaw joint is right at the back of the head, so that the gape when the beak is open is enormous - large enough for lizards, frogs, rodents and small birds to be easily engulfed.
The boat also provided good views of the plants growing in or near the water, including these beautiful mangrove lilies:
and was small enough to enter the slack sidewaters, ...
where we had good views of the epihpytes growing on the trees, including ferns ...
... and orchids:
We were already on our way back to the jetty when we spotted one of our best sightings of the morning: a great-billed heron - at 110 cm and described in the bird books as 'huge', it's the Papua frogmouth of the heron world:
The bird trip over it was time to leave Daintree Village. Not far north of the Daintree River, there is a viewpoint that looks back over its mouth:
And the Daintree? That's still to come ...
It sounds like a rather confusing area, everything being known by the same name.
ReplyDeleteSorry to hear that once again you were the only person wanting a trip. Not so good for the guide and his pocket. But, from your point of view you had 100% of his attention which must have been great.
The nest of the brown-backed honeyeaters looks as though it's going to fall off, let alone hold any eggs and chicks. Living dangerously!
The photo of the mangrove lilies is beautiful the reflection is stunning. The fern growing on the tree is amazing. What a place to grow. Think I saw on another earlier photo that another plant was using the trunk as a host. So different to us here. Other than moss and the like.
Love the heron and the last photo is just beautiful. How much did you pay the bird to get in the shot too? ;O)
chp.
The green tree snake is lovely, a great photo of it.
ReplyDeleteI love the photo of the magrove lilies, too - one of those lucky shots as the boat was moving.
ReplyDeleteMost of the trees in the forests have 'epiphytes' - all that means is a plant growing on another plant non-parasitically - so using the tree as a place to grow rather than feeding on it (like mistletoe and dodder). Some of the epihphytes are enormous - I saw basket ferns that were more than a meter across. There's a whole community of animals that live in or on the epiphytes - for example, in the water in the axils of the leaves.
I didn't know the bird was on that last shot until I edited it for the blog. I nearly edited it out. I've no idea what species it is.
"I didn't know the bird was on that last shot until I edited it for the blog. I nearly edited it out."
ReplyDeleteSo glad you didn't. It looks great.
Understand about the plants on the other trees when you refer it too mistletoe. It's obviously just a lot bigger there than here!
Not quite like mistletoe. Mistletoe is a parasitic plant - it feeds on its host tree. Epiphytes - like the ferns and orchids - are just growing there (the 'host' just provides a place to grow), and not 'stealing' from the tree.
ReplyDeleteOh, I didn't know that mistletoe was a parasite, just thought it grew on the host tree. Interesting, I'll never look at it now in the same way. :O)
ReplyDeletechp.
Just had to go and check that :-)
ReplyDeleteMistletoe commonly reduces the growth rate of the host, and a heavy infestation can kill it.
Mistletoe's do some photosynthesis, but they seem to extract water and minerals from the host.