What's About: Cairns & Tablelands Birding, 31 August - 9 September 2026

These records are flagged as unusual by eBird's automated filters and may be reviewed, corrected or withdrawn afterwards. We re-check each one against eBird before posting, but a flagged sighting is provisional until it is confirmed.

An extended edition, bringing What's About onto its new schedule. From here it publishes each Thursday, covering the week to the Wednesday before.

This was festival week. The Cairns Birders Festival filled the calendar with walks, cruises, talks and self-guided sessions right across Cairns and the Tablelands, and it drew a genuine crowd, plenty of visitors from well beyond the region among them. From the people we spoke to, the feedback was warm and the mood was better still. A big congratulations to the organisers and everyone who pitched in; a lot of work goes into a week like that, and it showed.

A week to remember

It had everything, including the weather. The festival opened under grey skies and rain, weathered a properly rough crossing out to Michaelmas Cay, and came good in the end with a run of beautiful days to finish. In between there were dawn walks and rainforest strolls, river cruises, evening spot-lighting, library talks and easygoing self-guided sessions on the Esplanade. We managed to dip in and out of a few ourselves, an evening on backyard birds, a morning at Cattana Wetlands, and a Welcome the Waders session on the foreshore, and every one was well attended and good fun. The photography sessions and the photo competition rounded it out nicely. It was the kind of week that reminds you how good this birding community is.

And then, a Kelp Gull

Just as the festival wound down, the Cairns Esplanade produced another one. A Kelp Gull, a genuinely rare bird for tropical Queensland, turned up on the northern end and was seen by a steady stream of observers through the following days, one lucky birder even picking it up from their balcony. Coming so soon after the Redshank, it is a remarkable run of form for one stretch of foreshore. The record was still firming up through eBird's review as we went to press, so we have listed it below with the rest, but a good many people have now had eyes on it.

The birds kept coming too

Underneath all the events, the season did its own thing, and spring migration is now well and truly on. The Tablelands turned up a Spotted Quail-thrush back in the Mount Carbine country, always a cracking bird, alongside a swag of fresh arrivals: an Australasian Grass-Owl, a Black Falcon, a Painted Buttonquail, a Banded Honeyeater and a Rufous Songlark. Out in the dry country around Chillagoe a different cast appeared, a Red-backed Kingfisher, a Restless Flycatcher, Masked Finch and even Red Junglefowl. In the rainforest a Fernwren showed at Mossman Gorge and a Black Bittern along the coast, while a White-throated Nightjar and a Barking Owl called after dark. On the water the waders and terns kept building, with a Pacific Golden-Plover, a Whiskered Tern and a Pacific Swift logged, and the woodswallows moving through in numbers. After the winter quiet, the place is filling up fast.

The Redshank bows out

And so, quietly, an era ends. After three extraordinary weeks on the Cairns Esplanade, the Common Redshank dwindled to a couple of sightings early in the period and then slipped away. It was a genuine event while it lasted, the bird that flew halfway around the world and stayed long enough for half of Cairns to see it. Safe travels, wherever it has gone.

Our thanks, as ever, to everyone who got out and logged what they saw, and to the local photographers who share their shots; the whole picture is built from all of it.

That was the extended fortnight around Cairns and the Tablelands. A festival to remember, a Kelp Gull to cap it, and the migrants arriving daily. Spring is well and truly here, and we will see you Thursday.