Darram Conservation Park

Visited: late dry season

Recommendation: This stretch of road was a fantastic place for easy birding. It is easy to access from Kununurra and is a must do if you are in the area.

Darram Conservation Park is just over the dam the the west of Kununurra. It is just a small road leading away from the Kununurra-Wyndham road down to Lake Kununurra. It runs past some agricultural fields on the right and on the left is the Darram Conservation Park. This, in turn,  runs parallel along the lake on the left. Then it turns into some small holdings and mangrove plantations.

But it was that first area along the conservation park that I had some great success. I didn't even need to get out of the campervan or enter into the conservation park. Kununurra local information says there are tracks there but I couldn't actually see anything very much so it was really handy to be able to stay in the vehicle. The best time to see the birds was early morning. They were also present in the late afternoon but not in such great numbers. 

It was an absolute boon for finches here. There were just hundreds and hundreds of them on either sides of the road in the shorter grass on the right hand side and the longer grass and bushes and vegetation of the left hand side. Golden-headed Cisticola were calling and calling. They were so persistent and there were so many of them it was a little difficult to ignore. 

Golden-headed Cisticola (Cisticola exilis) 

The most common finch there was the Crimson and again it was hard not to succumb and take pictures of them even though I already have plenty of them. A real treat was to see the Star Finch but they were all really shy. I tried to crawl along the road to where they were feeding but as soon as I got close they would take off down the road. It was very frustrating. If I stayed stationary then they didn't tend to come back to an area either. After this cat and mouse game I finally struck lucky and although it quite a long time, I did get some decent shots of them. 

The star of the show here was the Yellow-rumped Munia. This was my first time in seeing this bird, so it quickly became a target. There were only 4 birds in the whole melee of birds. I caught glimpses of them as I travelled down the road but struggled to get a good luck. Eventually, I found an overgrown culvert that obviously still had some running water coming out of it. I realised that if I just waited the birds would come. There were martins circling and lots of finches and honeyeaters moving around. In the midst of this the munia sat out on long stalks of grass for me. 

In the open fields on the right, I saw Bustards just wandering the field. There were also egrets and corellas doves, kites and cuckoo around. 

The most spectacular in the afternoon visit were the Magpie Geese. There were just huge numbers of them coming and going in waves. It made for quite a sight. My trips here were nice and easy birding - a very, very pleasant environment and some fantastic birds 

Magpie Geese (Anseranas semipalmata)