Birdlife Southern Queensland - Darling Downs Local Branch
Our observer party trekked along the bridle trail below Tobruk Drive Lookout on the Toowoomba eastern escarpment this morning, compiling Birdata records for three 2ha-20 minute sites (previously surveyed by BSQDD) within a 500m radius search area. Conditions were quite good for birding and the tracks were easy walking, though we hoped for a little more sunshine to break through the cloud cover.
The first BSQDD excursion for 2025, held on 15 February, was a joint activity with Toowoomba Bird Observers at a private property beside Lockyer Creek in the Lockyer locality (between Helidon and Murphys Creek).
Main Range National Park is a massive national park in several sections, and is part of Gondwana Rainforests of Australia World Heritage Area. It is actually deceptively close to Toowoomba and we based ourselves at the Manna Gum camping ground, and surveyed a number of sites in the Goomburra Section of the park.
Key Biodiversity Areas is a global program strongly supported by BirdLife Australia (read more here); designations provide a focus for conservation effort but are not legally binding. For the past few years, the Darling Downs group of BirdLife Southern Queensland has been acting as Guardian for the Key Biodiversity Area described as Bunya Mountains and Yarraman KBA.
Surveying a new location is always fun, and that’s exactly what happened when we visited McKnight park on the side of the Toowoomba Range.
Not deterred by overcast skies and forecast showers, an intrepid team of five members of BSQDD and/or TBO undertook the first systematic group surveys of birds in the lower section of Prince Henry Drive Park on 11 May 2024.
Today’s excursion at Prince Henry Drive was rescheduled from destinations proposed earlier, which proved unworkable at this time. As always, we enjoyed easy birding with the advantage of being able to look down on some tree tops.
Braving dense fog (in Toowoomba) and hordes of mosquitoes on site, 11 birders visited Lake Broadwater (via Dalby) early on 10 February for the fourth excursion to this conservation park by BirdLife’s Darling Downs group.
Maintaining something of a tradition for first excursion of the year, our local BirdLife group (8 participants) today visited Geham National Park.
Once again we finished the year with a great weekend in the Bunya Mountains completing surveys for the Key Biodiversity Area programme.