Frogmouths and gibberbirds down under

Roy has become a fount of knowledge on local plant life as well as on the birds that live in them. If you want to find birds, you ought to know what habitats they prefer. He points out strangler figs, hoop pines, and enormous draping "basket" ferns that jut from soaring tree trunks as though someone had climbed them and hung planters.

As he does, he illustrates what must be a job requirement for birding guides: an ability to carry on a quiet conversation, stopping abruptly to point out a bird, then picking up the thread of the chat without skipping a beat.

The flow of part of the story went something like this: "...I'd lost the eyepiece. Oh! There's a rose-crowned fruit dove. See that big thick tree through the gap? The knobbly thing with branches? Just to the left there! Absolutely glorious bird. Rang back a month later, and they couldn't find spare parts. There! It's back again. Two of them there! Absolutely fabulous birds. So he said: 'Your binoculars are in the States for repair....' "

It's really not hard to converse with a birding guide once you get the hang of it.

By the end of the day, which also took us to a cemetery ideally placed for watching waterfowl along the shore of Lake Samsonvale, it had quickly become clear why Queensland is for birders. We failed on only two counts: We never spotted a tawny frogmouth, and we came up empty-handed in trying to meet Helen's request for a fresh pineapple from their favorite roadside stand. Sold out.

This experience led my colleague and me to take another stab at birding a week later near Mossman, about an hour's drive north of Cairns. This time, our guide was Del Richards, a soft-spoken man who has earned a reputation for tracking down some of the most elusive birds in the area.

Like Roy, he is happy to work with neophytes as well as with more experienced birders. "I try to treat everybody equally," he says. "That way I can boost the inexperienced."

As if to underscore the point, he gently tells his two guests at one point that he can tell the difference between city folks and folks tuned to the ways of the wild.

"How?" we ask. By how quietly - or not - they close car doors. Point taken. The doors lose their thunder from then on.

Del demonstrates another tenet of birding - the bush may not always be the best place to look for some hard-to-spot species.

We hike a trail in Mossman Gorge National Park, where he points to a variety of plant and bird species. Then we head toward civilization: His contacts in Port Douglas, about 15 minutes south of Mossman, have spotted three Papuan frogmouths in a tree in the courtyard of a small resort in the middle of town.

We quietly climb stairs to an empty apartment, walk out on a balcony, and come virtually face to beak with the creatures, perhaps six feet away. They get their name from their odd-shaped beaks; and they sport "eyebrows" that would make Groucho Marx jealous. But unless you know where they are and what to look for, they might as well be stubs of broken branches sticking out from a tree..

Stanford's Dr. Schneider, who spends time with Del whenever he's in the neighborhood, recalls sending Del a list of birds he and his ornithologist wife wanted to see during a visit.

"We'd listed the paradise kingfisher with a 'Hah!' next to it," he says. These birds are rare and inhabit only a small portion of northern Queensland's York Peninsula.

Toward the end of their day together, Del offhandedly pulled over to a spot "that would be nice for a walk." While Schneider and his wife sauntered ahead, he quietly hung back, set up his birding scope, and gently whistled for their attention. There, through the lush vegetation, appeared their "hah" species. Del got the last laugh.

• Birdwatching in Queensland, a directory of Queensland bird-watching tours, bird clubs, guides, bird-oriented accommodations, and reference information, www.ausbird.com/qld.html.

• Birds Queenslands, website of the Queensland Ornithological Society, www.birdsqueensland.org.au.

• Fine Feather Tours, Del Richards, www.finefeathertours.com.au.

• Birding Services Brisbane, Roy Sonnenburg, www.birdingservices.com.au.

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