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Visited: very early spring
Recommendation: Lovely but busy campsite with a busy waterhole and lots of bird species. Definitely worth a visit.
Archer Campground is in D'Aguilar National Park south west of the Sunshine Coast. It is named after Sir George D'Aguilar, who was a British military officer who was known for writing a significant army textbook at the time, "Regulations and Punishments of the British Army." Not the most attractive of reasons but the area is stunning. It is a significant protected area, encompassing a vast bushland area. Its size is around 36,000 to 40,000 hectares. To put that in perspective, this makes it one of the largest and most accessible national parks located so close to a major city anywhere in the world. It is also the second-largest park in South-East Queensland, surpassed only by a section of Great Sandy National Park.
The campsite is small with only nine sites set in a small clearing surrounded by thick rainforest and temperate forest along the banks of an attractive creek. We arrived just after lunchtime and immediately you could just sense that it was going to be a great place for wildlife. Immediately, there was an Emerald Dove feeding on the grass so I spent some time trying to photograph that but as these shy doves do, it wouldn't come out of the shadows. I only got shots of it when the sky was more overcast but it doesn't give you that bronze-emerald sheen on the back.
Pacific Emerald Dove (Chalcophaps longirostris)
The creek runs right next to the campsite so it's only a few metres away. As soon as I went to have a look, I found several male and female Scarlet Myzomela coming down to drink. It was a very pleasant surprise. I could also hear scrubwrens in the undergrowth and as to be expected, Yellow Robins were everywhere.
Scarlet Myzomela (Myzomela sanguinolenta)
Walking around the campsite, I found a young White-throated Treecreeper on the ground and every now and again an adult would come and feed it. The key difference in plumage between the male and female White-throated Treecreeper is a subtle but distinctive mark on the female. The female White-throated Treecreeper has a small orange-brown or rufous patch on the side of her face, just below the ear coverts. The male lacks this orange patch.
White-throated Treecreeper (Cormobates leucophaeus)
There was lots of sounds from the forest and we looked at what we thought was a whistler but turned out to be a Spectacled Monarch buzzing around. Unfortunately, it didn't come out of the shadows or sit still long enough for me to photograph it. When I looked on the eBird app, I saw that there were also Black-faced Monarchs and White-eared Monarchs. I love to see monarchs so I played the calls for both to remind me. Incredibly, a pair of White-eared Monarchs immediately flew in and sat up nicely for me in one of the trees.
White-eared Monarch (Monarcha leucotis)
As soon as darkness fell, the Boobooks started calling. So we headed out earlier than we normally would, about quarter past six. There were at least three birds calling in the vicinity, including one right in the campsite close to our van. As we walked through the picnic areas, there were Red-necked Pademelon on the grass. But no owls.
We went down to the water where we could hear frogs, possibly Barred Frogs, calling. But we couldn't see any and access is quite limited to the water. So, we walked out onto the road and and along to the causeway and continued to the other picnic area. We could hear a Noisy Pitta calling from across the water. An Antechinus shot out from under the picnic tables and into its burrow. No photographs, as it clearly saw us before we saw it.
Eastern Stony Creek Frog (Litoria wilcoxii)
Grey Huntsman (Holconia immanis)
We went again down to the water, we saw some Huntsman Spiders but there wasn't an awful lot about. So we headed back across the causeway and had another look for frogs. And this time we were successful finding around six to eight Stony Creek Frogs. And these are a different subspecies to the ones we've seen up in far north Queensland so we were quite pleased with that. On the return we heard some more, distant frogs, and a Moorhen called from the water. But by the time we got back to the campsite an hour later, even the owls had stopped calling. Still, it was a very pleasant walk and nice moonlight across the bush.
The dawn chorus the next morning was quite phenomenal, dozens of birds singing away. The Wonga Pigeon sat up high with its incessant repeating call, just seemed to just carry on for ages and ages until the bird ran out of breath. The Scarlet Myzomela were also up early, there was a good number of them here all around with their cheery short little song.
The Eastern Yellow Robins came down and started hunting, three of them in a family from the posts around the campsite. I could hear an Eastern Shrike-Tit again but couldn't see it. The White-Eared Monarch and the Spectacled Monarch were in the same place as they were the day before, so it was really nice to see and hear them.
Eastern Yellow Robin (Eopsaltria australis)
Sitting in the campervan drinking tea, I watched lots of flyovers from lorikeets, parrots and cockatoos who were all calling as they flew high above the canopy. But the little bush birds really, really made it a great stay and a very pleasant place to be. But, there was one last surprise. As we were packing up the van, I scanned the trees one last time and spotted a pair of Tawny Frogmouth sitting asleep up high.
Tawny Frogmouth (Podargus strigoides)
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