PHOTOS from Conondale National Park
In August 2016 we camped for a few days at the Booloumba 1 campsite in Conondale National park north of Brisbane in southeast QLD.
Please find the photos from this trip in the gallery below the text.

Only identifiable by looking at a sequence of photos, unfortunately this was the only wompoo pigeon that I saw on this trip.


Photographed while preparing to roost for the night. It is quite astonishing the first time you encounter these large ground birds flying up into the trees late in the afternoon.

Guilty! I think this is a Torresian crow. It is flying off with a piece of bread stolen from another group of campers.


Azure kingfishers were plentiful and easy to photograph along the banks of the creek. This one was caught with a fish in its mouth.

A pair of laughing kookaburras enjoying the morning sun.

With the bird remaining shy, and hiding away in the bushes this was my best photo of a grey shrike-thrush on this trip.

Little shrike-thrushes are smaller and have more orange colouring than the very common grey shrike-thrush.

The lack of a white stripe extending up the feather shaft of the secondary wing coverts, and paler feather edging on the rump identify this species.

Bellbirds dominated the upper half of the camping area. They are difficult to photograph because they spend most of their time in the treetops.

Noisy miners are well-adapted to living in spaces cleared by humans, and through their aggression are a great threat to other native birds.


Hovering to sip nectar in lantana flowers, this bird is our Australian answer to the American hummingbirds.


Their brilliant red colouring makes these tiny honeyeaters identifiable even when they are foraging in the tops of very tall trees.



Recognisable by its call and the bump on its beak this noisy friarbird sits high in the treetop silhouetted by the early morning sun.

This is the colourful male of the species. The female is much more drab.


This delightful photo of a spectacled monarch, was taken by Joe in the campground. I missed out on seeing it! Thanks Joe!

Trillers are amongst the less common birds that we see on camping trips so it was a thrill to be able to take photos of this one.


Easily mistaken for a brown thornbill, the large-billed scrub-wren has a longer beak and lacks striations on its pale-coloured breast.

The size of a brown thornbill, but differing from it by the dark stripe through the eye, and the paler stripe above the eye, I think this is a brown geryhone.


Yellow-throated scrub-wrens are slightly larger, with longer legs and yellow colouring, than their much more common white-throated relatives.



Photographed in the camping area. These birds are seen everywhere, often in close association with human habitation.

Although they look quite similar to willy wagtails and are about the same size, restless flycatchers are much less common.

Caught by the roadside with its beak full of the seeds from the weed 'farmers friend'.




Caught in the act of swallowing a worm in the early morning sun, this bird was photographed in a cow-paddock adjacent to the national park.

A pair of peewees owned the road in the early morning sun. The female, with a vertical black stripe extending down across her eye is one the left.

A pair of pale-headed rosellas eating the seeds of farmers' friends by the roadside. It is great to see something challenging the dominance of these annoying weeds!


