Birds of Springbrook

Golden whistler

By Ryan Pearson
In the hills near Queensland's Gold Coast lies some beautiful rainforest at Springbrook. A short camping trip up there allowed some hiking time, and plenty of wildlife encounters. It was a rainy weekend so my camera didn't come out as often as I'd like but below are a handful of bird photos I managed to take entirely within The Settlement camp ground area.. along with some crappy pics of a couple of other critters (taken on a rainy night with my phone).

These red-browed finches were hyper-abundant, until I pulled my camera out. As soon as I did that they became scarce. I eventually got a few shots but would have liked some better opportunities considering how many were actually around. 

Red-browed finch feeding on grass seeds.

White-browed scrubwren

These fairywrens were just as prominent as the red-browed finches. I've never seen so many fairywrens in the one place!

Superb fairywren with an itchy beak.

An eastern yellow robin.

Eastern spinebill.

Eastern spinebill spying on me.

Lastly, please excuse the crappiness of the following two photos - they were 'taken with my iPhone' on a rainy night. The fast moving and blurry Bandicoot leapt into the middle of our camp while we were minding our own business. It came close enough to touch multiple times, and then went and leapt over the small-eyed snake, alerting us to its presence only 1m from our swag entrance. Good times.

Northern brown bandicoot

Probable: small-eyed snake