The Kimberley, Western Australia David & Vicki Bryant May-June 2015 Introduction The Kimberley lies in the extreme north of Western Australia between Broome-Derby and Kununurra. It is within the Tropics and experiences two main seasons, a wet and a dry; each lasting six months. It is during the dry that most visitors arrive because the weather is good and the unsealed roads are usually open. The Kimberly landscape is best known via the publicity given to the sandstone gorges of the Bungle-Bungles, although this lies on the southern border of the Kimberley-proper. The area is an undulating savannah landscape, grazed by cattle and sheep and cut through by red-sandstone gorges, themselves often harbouring patches of denser woodland and permanent water. Most visitors arrive in the Kimberley by air via Broome, at the western limit of the area. To cross the area directly along the Gibb River Road by 4x4 takes 2-4 days depending on your driving/sleeping choices. There are several National Parks and reserves easily accessible (i.e. less than 2 hours) from the Gibb River Road. Most will visit these sites along the way and spend much longer on the
journey, perhaps 10-20 days. The return journey can be made along the more southerly Great Northern Highway, which is fully sealed and has reliable fuel availability: it is the normal route for commercial vehicles and those without access to a 4x4. Gorges, escarpments and savannahs of the Kimberley Kimberley endemics and near endemics There are two bird species endemic to the Kimberley: the iconic Black Grasswren and the Kimberly Honeyeater, the latter a relatively recent split. There are also four near-endemics, shared between the Kimberley and Pilbara regions (Dusky Gerygone, Mangrove Golden Whistler, Mangrove Robin and Yellow White-eye). Not least, however, are some sought-after species found more easily in the Kimberly than elsewhere, such as the Purple-crowned Fairywren, Yellow Chat and Gouldian Finch. Finally, there are 16 subspecies endemic and nearendemic to the Kimberly, several of which are very distinctive, including the Kimberley Flycatcher (recently downgraded from species status) and White-quilled Rock Pigeon. Not least about the allure of the Kimberley, however, is the million-plus aggregation of wintering shorebirds in the Broome area and on beaches to the south, said to be one of the largest and the most diverse non-breeding wader assemblages in the world. Roosting waders at Broome in early June 2015, including Great Knot and Red Knot
Options for visitors The Kimberley is one of the least accessible parts of Australia but is becoming an increasingly popular destination for birders wanting to see the Kimberley endemics and specialists. The first problem for independent (overseas) visitors without local contacts, is to find out how to access this large and remote area during what is likely to be a relatively short holiday. A tempting target is to focus on the Black Grasswren on the Mitchell Plateau, and build an itinerary around that, as many of the Aussie birders we met were doing. However, they mostly arrived in their 4x4s driven from homes far-away on the East coast or in southern Western Australia, so the time spent was not amongst their central issues. Furthermore, it is quickly obvious that if you are going to get to the Mitchell Plateau, you should organise a convoy of at least two beefy 4x4s, with all the get-out-of-trouble 'extras', and also be prepared to have your timetable frustrated by extreme weather, road closures or fires. On our visit, a group of visiting birders was held up indefinitely on their Grasswren quest until a large-scale fire had been dealt with - an all-too-common feature of the Kimberley in the dry season. While visiting in the wet season (November to April) is unlikely to be frustrated by fires, it could be interrupted or prevented altogether by road closures due to flooding or landslips. Hence, the timing option for most visitors (away from Broome-Derby) is quite narrow: namely May to October. The peak season for visitors is June to August, so our trip in May largely avoided the problem of crowding at camp sites and at some scenic attractions. We decided to forego the Black Grasswren and concentrate on the more accessible Kimberley birds and wildlife more generally. This meant we could travel as a single vehicle, not spend so long on the road, and still have a fair chance of seeing all the other Kimberley specialists. It proved to be a good choice for us, seeing 177 species in all while missing out on just a couple of the area s accessible specialists (a rail and a quail), over 12 days. Vehicle hire and costs We hired our small 4x4 from Wicked Campers (Suzuki Gran Vitara) with a convenient folding tent on the roof. This was the smallest car on the road in the Kimberley, where the commonest were big 4x4s, often towing a trailer, and the largest were occasional 3-trailer Road Trains blotting out the landscape for 5 minutes with their dust-trails when they passedby. The small size of our car often attracted good-natured sneers from better-equipped travellers! Roadside birding was more satisfactory on side roads than by the Gibb River Road but even there regular smotherings with dust from passing 4x4s were all-too-common. The obvious solution of walking away from the roads to avoid this was frustrated by the secure fencing along most roadsides and the privacy laws which are carefully guarded. We slowly appreciated another risk of pulling up to look at a bird: if you were then enveloped by a dust cloud you could be hit by the vehicle following (nobody slows down in a dust fog!), unless you pull onto the rough ground on the narrow verges and risk a puncture. These points make sure few people drive at night and comprised one of the few downsides of a Kimberley visit. While our vehicle hire was advertised at $94 a day, the actual price was double this amount once various compulsory charges had been added (including the A$400 fee simply to enter The Kimberley). Hiring a 4x4 vehicle hence costs from about A$200 a day, up to at least
twice this for a full specification 4x4. Regular 2WD road cars are not available for hire off the sealed-road system, which ends just to the east of Derby. Even reaching Broome Bird Observatory (BBO, 20 km from Broome) would be off-limits for many car hirers. The Wicked car was very minimally (i.e. 'poorly') equipped and we needed to spend about A$200 to bring it to a level suitable for a 12 day trip (i.e. water storage, extra fuel storage, cooking utensils). We were pleased to donate this stuff to BBO at the end of the trip for the use of later travellers, so it was not a wasted investment. A further problem with a small 4x4 was the limited fuel capacity. The Suzuki just made the Mount Barnett to Derby journey on one tankful of fuel with no refuelling options on the way. Indeed beyond Derby, Mount Barnett was the only petrol station open during our visit within reach, in spite of one other petrol station (Imintji) being marked on the otherwise very useful Hema Kimberley map. A final problem with our small 4x4 was the limited ground-clearance, which frustrated access to two sites where we were not prepared to risk damaging the underfloor (Bell Gorge and Sir John Gorge at Mornington). We concluded that a bigger 4x4 would have been worthwhile, and not much more costly if from a local hirer. The option we did not explore but was suggested to us later was to phone hiring garages in Broome (such as BroomeBroome) and get a quote from them: we believe you would get better value, and a better car, than going via the international vehicle hirers or comparison websites. If you are trying to minimise costs, however, a Suzuki Vitara-type vehicle will serve most purposes, as it did for us. Frankly, at the time we visited a 2WD car would have negotiated 99% of the road, although the other 1% could have been embarrassing. Petrol costs for our trip were A$500 over 12 days for 3000kms (at A$1.3 to A$2 per litre Unleaded). Itinerary We set out from Broome-Derby with plenty of supplies but no fixed agenda: we planned to go as far along the Gibb River Road as we could, consistent with spending most of our time birding and walking (including some car-birding rather than driving per se). The only food available east of Derby is at Mt Barnett Roadhouse, hence the major pre-trip stock-up in Derby. The period from 1-3pm was usually very hot (30-40C), so was a time for a break, or for travelling and car-birding. Our eventual route was relatively modest when viewed on a map of Australia but involved virtually no hanging about for access problems and we conclude that, given what we saw, it makes a reasonably ambitious itinerary for most visitors, except those with only a short hit-list of Kimberley species. All our birds were self-found, using our experience of Australian birds and knowledge of habitats and distributions but we had only limited familiarity with calls. Exceptionally, for the Yellow Chat we were guided onto private land after several failures to find this species elsewhere. On this point, it is worth repeating that most of the Kimberley is privately owned and access is invariably discouraged by strongly worded signs. This is a rather dispiriting aspect of the area for visitors from Scotland etc. where foot-access to wild land is open to all. Nevertheless, it has to be said that long-distance wandering on foot across sun-baked plains at 35C plus is usually impractical anyway so we were only frustrated on a few occasions when an interesting bird dropped out of sight not far from the roadside.
Dates show overnight stopovers (in bold) and some nearby birding locations 22-23rd May Arrival via Perth Broome Bird Observatory and recording area 24th May Cape Leveque and stops along access road 25th May Windjana Gorge 26 & 27th May Silent Grove (near Bell Gorge), Mount Barnett (for petrol and supplies) 28-30th May Mornington Reserve: Dimond and Sir John Gorges 31st May Mount Barnett (for petrol), Derby 1st June Broome Bird Observatory and Roebuck Plains 2nd June Broome environs and departure to Sydney Birding summary We began our trip with two days at Broome Bird Observatory, where excellent staff greet, help and advise all their visitors. The camping facilities were good and there are several productive trails and hides around the observatory. This choice provided an excellent way to ease our way back into birding in Australia, with a mix of more familiar species (waders) and our first Kimberley specialities (Whistlers etc.). The gathering of waders was still impressive although the wintering million-plus shorebirds in the wider area had mostly departed. A few Asian Dowitchers remained but there were no Little Curlew and just a single Oriental Plover was seen during our visit. We discovered that the best viewing opportunities were at out-ofsight high-tide roosts, on beaches between the Observatory and Broome; although care has to be taken not to flush birds from the beach, nor to coincide with visiting fishermen who will otherwise have done this before you arrive, especially at weekends. Large numbers of Great Knot, many in summer plumage remained, plus Terek Sandpiper, Grey-tailed Tattler and others. On one day when visitors and staff covered most of the local sites, the nightly observatory log totalled 115 species. Our highlight was a guided visit (on our last day) to find the elusive Yellow Chat in the saltbush on the nearby Roebuck Plains. Sunset at Cape Leveque
Cape Leveque is renowned for its sunsets and provided us with a chance to visit the oceanside. This site gave us our only (very distant, probably Hutton s) shearwaters of the trip but otherwise was just a pleasant stop off, and could well be passed over for the better birding in the Kimberley-proper. Stopping on the access road from Broome was often frustrated by loose sand, and by fast moving vehicles and their dust clouds. Windjana Gorge with Boab tree in foreground Windjana Gorge An impressive, narrow, sandstone gorge with running water (and freshwater crocodiles) and a luxuriant riparian forest with a trail for access. Our dawn visit was solitary but other users arrived later in the day. Yellow-tinted Honeyeaters were ubiqitous and remained so throughout our time in the Kimberley. The abundance of Great Bowerbirds continued to impress and we found our first Pictorella Finches (Mannikins). Figbirds swarmed over one fig-tree. Silent Grove The campsite was not silent but rather crowded with the holiday-season's first weekend visitors. Nevertheless, a scramble up the hillside behind the camp gave peace and quiet with White-quilled Rock Pigeon (also in Bell Gorge) and Sandstone Shrike-thrush plus many honeyeaters in the flowering eucalypts around the camp, including Banded Honeyeaters. One surprise locally was our first Gouldian Finch, seen at the nearby rubbish dump! This dump lies on the south side of the Gibb River Road about 1km west of the community of Imintji. The Gouldian was amongst a flock of finches drinking the fetid dump water early in the day: a worthwhile stop-over for those not visiting Mornington (see below).
Mornington Wilderness Camp and Reserve The highlight of our visit to the Kimberley was Mornington Reserve, a former ranch taken over and then de-stocked by the independent Australian Wildlife Conservancy. The results have been impressive, due to a combination of successful conservation management and a naturally rich and varied habitat. Highlights were the riparian forest along Annie Creek, Dimond Gorge and Sir John Gorge. Amongst a thriving population of Purple-crowned Fairy-wrens along Annie Creek and elsewhere was a single male that retained his purple-crown; fully worth the search. Normally, we were told, more males would still be in breeding plumage at the end of May but the early start to the dry season had apparently curtailed breeding. The high-light of our visit and the reason most birders come, was the array of finch species, benefitting from the reduced grazing and an experimental burning scheme. Gouldian Finch was frequent with about 50 seen over 2 days. A more particular highlight occurred just as we left the Reserve; 0630-0715h. At the first river crossing just outside the reserve gate we waited on the north side for visiting finches. Fortunately, no cars came by while we watched as hundreds of birds came to drink and bathe, including 30 Gouldian Finches (with several 'red-heads') plus 5 other finch species. Only the Star Finch was missing, but we had seen this earlier at a creek crossing by the camp HQ. They were joined by Budgerigars, Northern Rosellas and others. Gouldian Finch and Budgerigar Derby and Broome townships The only notable site we visited in and immediately around these two towns was the Broome Sewage Works. It is surrounded by a security fence which prevents waterside access but the lagoons can be overlooked during a circuit of the Works in
the car. The unmarked entrance is off Clementson Street, just to the east of its junction with Hunter Street (opposite a Butcher's shop). This was the only site on our visit to the Kimberley holding significant numbers of ducks, including the two Whistling Duck species. Earlier in the year it holds significant numbers of roosting waders but in early June still held several (freshwater) species otherwise scarce in Roebuck Bay. Paperbark Flycatcher Further information The excellent website www.kimberleyaustralia.com. will provide much more detail and guidance on logistics than I have been able to; it is written and maintained by a local. The Broome Bird Observatory website is informative about options around Broome. On the road, the staff at Mr Barnett Roadhouse provided all manner of advice about road conditions, food and fuel while fellow travellers were invariably friendly, helpful and cheerful in the Aussie style. The Hema map of the Kimberley is widely available in Broome and Derby. Annotated Species list (after Simpson and Day, 2 nd ed, with some updates/additions) Locations are given for species seen at only a single site. Square brackets show probables. Hoary-headed Grebe Australasian Grebe
[Hutton s Shearwater] - Cape Leveque Wilson s Storm-Petrel - Roebuck Bay, Broome (details on BBO website) Australian Pelican Darter Little Pied Cormorant Little Black Cormorant Great-billed Heron - Derby Pacific Heron White-faced Heron Cattle Egret Great Egret Little Egret Intermediate Egret Eastern Reef Egret Striated Heron Rufous Night Heron Mornington Reserve Black-necked Stork BBO, Roebuck Plains Australian White Ibis Straw-necked Ibis Royal Spoonbill Broome Sewage Works Wandering Whistling Duck Broome Sewage Works Plumed Whistling Duck Broome Sewage Works Black Swan Pacific Black Duck Grey Teal Pink-eared Duck Hardhead Black-shouldered Kite Pacific Baza and Brown Falcon Pacific Baza Mornington Reserve Black Kite Brahminy Kite Whistling Kite Black-breasted Buzzard
Brown Goshawk Collared Sparrowhawk White-bellied Sea-eagle Wedge-tailed Eagle Spotted Harrier Swamp Harrier Australian Hobby Brown Falcon Australian Kestrel Brown Quail Purple Swamphen Eurasian Coot Australian Bustard Brolga Pied Oystercatcher - BBO Sooty Oystercatcher Masked Lapwing Red-kneed Dotterel Broome Sewage Works Black-fronted Dotterel Red-capped Plover Black-winged Stilt - BBO Red-necked Avocet - BBO Ruddy Turnstone - BBO Eastern Curlew - BBO Whimbrel - BBO Grey-tailed Tattler - BBO Greenshank Redshank - BBO Terek Sandpiper BBO Asian Dowitcher, Great Knot, Eastern Bar-tailed Godwit and Terek Sandpiper
Asian Dowitcher - BBO Black-tailed Godwit - BBO Eastern Bar-tailed Godwit - BBO Red Knot - BBO Great Knot - BBO Curlew Sandpiper BBO Red-necked/Long-toed Stint - BBO Australian Pratincole - BBO Silver Gull Whiskered Tern - BBO Caspian Tern - BBO Common Tern - BBO Gull-billed Tern - BBO Little Tern - BBO Crested Tern - BBO Lesser Crested Tern - BBO Feral Pigeon Peaceful Dove Diamond Dove Bar-shouldered Dove Common Bronzewing Crested Pigeon White-quilled Rock-Pigeon Silent Grove Red-tailed Black Cockatoo Galah Little Corella Western Long-billed Corella Sulphur-crested Cockatoo Rainbow Lorikeet Red-winged Parrot Budgerigar Northern Rosella
Northern Rosella Pallid Cuckoo - Mornington Pheasant Coucal - Mornington Barking Owl Silent Grove Azure Kingfisher Blue-winged Kookaburra Red-backed Kingfisher Sacred Kingfisher Rainbow Bee-eater Dollarbird BBO Horsefield's (Singing) Bushlark Welcome Swallow Tree Martin Fairy Martin Australian (Richard's) Pipit Black-faced Cuckoo-shrike White-bellied Cuckoo-shrike White-winged Triller Varied Triller - Mornington Lemon-bellied (Kimberley) Flycatcher Jacky Winter Silent Grove Buff-sided (White-browed) Robin - Mornington Mangrove Golden Whistler - BBO Rufous Whistler White-breasted Whistler - BBO Sandstone Shrike-thrush Silent Grove Grey Shrike-thrush Broad-billed Flycatcher - BBO Leaden Flycatcher Paperbark (Restless) Flycatcher Grey Fantail Mangrove Grey Fantail - BBO Northern Fantail Willie Wagtail Grey-crowned Babbler Golden-headed Cisticola [Zitting Cisticola] - Mornington Rufous Songlark Brown Songlark Purple-crowned Fairy-wren - Mornington Variegated Fairy-wren Red-backed Fairy-wren Green-backed Warbler Dusky Gerygone - BBO Mangrove Gerygone - BBO
Little Friarbird Yellow-throated Miner Singing Honeyeater White-gaped Honeyeater Yellow-tinted Honeyeater Grey-headed Honeyeater Grey-fronted Honeyeater White-throated Honeyeater Brown Honeyeater Bar-breasted Honeyeater Kimberley Honeyeater Banded Honeyeater Yellow Chat BBO, Roebuck Plains Mistletoebird Striated Pardalote Yellow White-eye Star Finch - Mornington Crimson Finch Zebra Finch Double-barred Finch Masked Finch - Mornington Long-tailed Finches and a Gouldian Finch bathing
Long-tailed Finch Pictorella Mannikin (Finch) Gouldian Finch Common Starling Olive-backed Oriole Figbird Windjana Gorge Great Bowerbird Australian Magpie-lark White-breasted Woodswallow Masked Woodswallow Black-faced Woodswallow Little Woodswallow Silver-backed Butcherbird Pied Butcherbird Australian Magpie Little Crow Torresian Crow Little Woodswallow