Thargomindah

The road from Quilpie to Thargomindah was only about 200kms, but it took us most of the day. Our first stop was for a family of emus that were standing at the fence watching the (infrequent) traffic. We haven't seen a lot of emus from the car during our travels (apart from one trip in South Australia where we had nephews who were scoring points for seeing different birds as part of a travel game we made up... and we went through an emu farm!). From Eromanga south, however, we've seen a lot. I think we counted five dead ones on the road to Thargomindah. 

Emus

Our lunch stop was at Toompine - "the pub with no town".

There were many subsequent stops for birds and lizards, with some flowers thrown in when the birds were not cooperating.

Little Friarbird

From the silhouette this seems to be a Bearded Dragon. Unfortunately while it was watching for birds, it was also watching Dazz, and as he took another couple of steps after this photo the dragon started down the tree and disappeared into the bush.

This Shingleback Lizard was a far better subject.

Emu prints in the sand.

A blurry Spiny-cheeked Honeyeater.

The stop that yielded the most birds and the best bird photo of the day was actually when we stopped to take pictures of the wildflowers!

Crimson Chat (female)

Crimson Chat (male)

There was a small flock of Zebra Finches.

Rufous Songlark

The camp on the river wasn't particularly inspiring, so it didn't matter that we arrived so late in the day.

The next morning we drove around the town. Just as Dazz asked if there was any mural art in town we came face to face with this!

We got out and walked up and down the street to take photos. We got back in the car and went around the block to head back out of town and found a couple more.

We have great memories of staying at Lake Bindegolly 15 years ago, and were looking forward to revisiting it after a good wet season. Although there were recent rains there was nowhere near as much water as there was last time (see photos here). 

It was quite a walk down to the water, and due to the recent rain and runoff it was quite muddy. Not crystal clear and see to the bottom like in 2011! The only birds we saw in the water were a White-necked Heron and some Masked Lapwings.

On our way down to the water we saw a flock of White-winged Fairy Wrens. There was only one male in breeding colours and none of them stayed still for very long.

Dazz had more success with photos around the camp in the mornings.

Singing Honeyeater 

Rainbow Bee-eaters 

Black-faced Woodswallow

Rufous Songlark

A lone Budgerigar - the first one we've see on this trip.

Being a lot further from the water also meant that there were no sunset photos looking over the lake.

On the morning we left we drove over to the day use area of the National Park on the other side of the road with the goal of walking to the lake over there. We had talked to some people who said they had seen some waterbirds on that side, so we thought we would show full commitment and do the 6 or 7km round trip to the lake viewing area. We got off to a great start in the carpark as this falcon was having breakfast. The feathers of his prey were floating off in the breeze with each peck and tug...

Peregrine Falcon

On the first part of the path there were trees and shrubs and we saw Chestnut-crowned Babblers, a Spiny-cheeked Honeater and Rufous Songlarks, but none of the photos were particularly good. There were also more Fairy-wrens but there were no males in full breeding colours. When we looked at this photo on the computer we could see that the top bird did have some colours.

White-winged Fairy-wrens 

After we'd gone about a kilometre we crossed paths with a guy on his way back from the lake. We asked if there were any birds and he said "not anymore"... There had been some earlier, but they had all moved to the other side of the lake. He looked at Dazz's camera and said that even with his lens they would look like ants in the photos. We thanked him very much and decided we'd go a bit further but not the additional 5km round trip on the open plains as the wind picked up and the sun got warmer (even though it was only about 9am). We could see a small rise a bit further on, and thought we would be able to see the lake from there, but we couldn't. What we could see was a lot of sandy track ahead and a good place to turn around.

On our way back we noticed some birds in a tree that were quite a distance away. They looked a bit like Crested Pigeons but they were too small, and some of them seemed to have white heads and the others looked all grey. I told Dazz we needed to go cross country to find out what they were. As we got a bit closer it became clear there was a family of Cockatiels.

Cockatiels (adult & juvenile)

Horsfield's Bronze-Cuckoo

Dazz thought these were native bees until we looked at the photo and saw they were little beetles.

So even though we were disappointed with the lack of water and waterbirds, we still ended up with some great photos and new memories.