A visit was made to this site on 2nd January, 2016 after Black-eared Cuckoo had been reported by Chris Burwell on the Brisbane birders Facebook page . This has been a well known spring/summer site for Painted Honeyeater for several years at least and this season there have been plenty around it would seem. The site is across from the Oakey Golf club at the junction of Warrego Hwy and Mount Tyson Road. I am not sure of the status of the fenced off land and as such I have never crossed the fence. Someone told me years ago it was a stock reserve and public land but I haven’t been able to find anything on line at least to confirm this. After saying this there would be nothing birdwise in the reserve that can’t be seen walking along the road reserve parallel with the Warrego Hwy or along Mount Tyson Road.
I arrived at 0620 and after a couple of minutes the beautiful (to my ears anyway) call of Painted Honeyeater was heard. In the two hours I was there I ended up seeing 9 individuals including at least a couple of immature birds. While following up the first Painted Honeyeater I heard a Horsfield’s Bronze-cuckoo give a couple of calls and then a couple of minutes later heard the Black-eared Cuckoo give two calls. These were the only calls I heard from these species throughout the duration of my visit. After birding my way along to the creek I saw a shadow fly over my head and keep going into the woodland before turning around and landing giving me great views of the Black-eared Cuckoo. I watched this bird for several minutes before continuing birding around the creek and back to and along Mount Tyson Road. Other good birds included White-winged Triller and Plum-headed Finch.
On the way home I stopped briefly at the Palms National Park a few kilometres northwest of Cooyar. There is a short circuit through the rainforest. Being the middle of the day it was fairly quiet although some Fruit-doves were active amongst figs and other fruiting trees and several Lace Monitors were present. The most exciting find for me was a single Powerful Owl feather along the track. Despite a bit of a search the bird remained undetected and may have been nowhere in the area at the time of my visit.