[A stop on the Top End Revisited Jul 2024 trip]
Knuckey Lagoons CR is a nature site just east of Darwin airport, and is a convenient location to pop into on your way to or from other places. Being a wetland style of place, it attracts a decent number of birds.
There are a few sections to the overall reserve but the one I’m focusing on here is the ephemeral wetland area accessed via Fiddlers Lane. This can be easily reached from the Stuart Highway though to my recollection there isn’t any helpful signage as you turn into Fiddlers Lane. There is private property on either side of the compact picnic area and thus your access to the lagoon is mostly going to be pretty stationary – if you’re keen to get the best or most comprehensive looks at the birds here you’ll need a very long lens or a spotting scope to look out across the water.
Also note there’s not much for the non-birder here. Other sections of the reserve apparently offer some walking tracks, with the usual crocodile warnings anywhere water. There also appears to be a similar access point to a sister lagoon on Randall Rd about half a kilometer to the west of Fiddlers Lane, but I didn’t know this at the time so couldn’t check it out.
The spot at the end of Fiddlers Lane is great if you like seeing birds on fence lines. At one point I was able to nab a photo of a Peaceful Dove near a Bar-Shouldered Dove on the wire fence, which was a first for me.
A pair of Forest Kingfishers proved entertaining; I’ll never tire of admiring their bright blue wing feathers. I also saw a pair of Sacred Kingfishers further off too.
On the day of my visit there was an abundance of Magpie-Larks – I counted at least 22.
The earnest birder will likely thoroughly scan the lagoon to see what might be about…
Most obviously, Plumed Egrets were dotted all over the place (I counted 24, out-numbering the Magpie-Larks!), hunting in the shallow water or observing proceedings from fences.
There was a solitary Great Egret in the mix too. You can tell these apart from the Plumed Egrets by their gape (the line below the eye) which extends well behind the eye, whereas the gape of the Plumeds only reaches the eye. Great Egrets are also slightly larger and have longer necks but that neck difference isn’t always apparent (e.g. when they curl them up in flight).
I don’t know how much the water level rises and falls here but I suspect it follows the common dynamic of the Top End: water holes and wetlands fill up in the wet season and slowly dry out during the dry season, when the diminishing fresh water locations concentrate bird life to them.
Further scans of the lagoon revealed Green Pygmy-Geese (too far for a decent photo), Magpie Geese, and a group of Little Pied and Little Black Cormorants hanging out with some resting Pacific Black Ducks.
I also spied a pair of Comb-Crested Jacana out in the grassy (swampy!) part of the wetland which for some reason came up as a Rare Bird in my eBird checklist – this means that you have to provide some justification for the sighting (photos and/or a description). It was extra-weird because they are commonly seen here according to eBird’s Illustrated Checklist frequency graph, and commonly observed in the enclosing region too (Litchfield, NT). So I’m not sure why it would be categorised as rare.
In the air above the lagoon two Whiskered Terns cruised around looking for easy food, while a Black-Necked Stork also made a distant cameo fly-by. At one point I spotted a Black Kite, and then a Whistling Kite which first stirred up some of the egrets, then dipped down to the water to grab… something. It was a bit distant so I never figured out what it had picked up; it didn’t look like a fish though. Weird.
Summary
Knuckey Lagoons, at least the accessible viewing spot at the end of Fiddlers Lane, offers a neat site suited for dropping into now and again to see what birds might be around. It boasts a decent species count of 202 on eBird, and I counted 28 species there in under an hour on my visit. A great deal of the water birds that can be seen in Australia have shown up there at one point or another – many of the duck species, and Little Curlew, for example – and even some shorebirds (Godwits, Asian Dowitcher etc). Lots of Top End birds are possible too; even Silver-Backed Butcherbirds have a respectable sighting frequency. The only downside to the location is that it’s no-frills: there’s no bird hide or boardwalk, for example, and a lot of birds will be distant given that you can’t (for example) circumnavigate the site on foot.
eBird:
Hotspot: Knuckey Lagoons CR (202 species)
Checklist for this visit: 27 Jul 2024 (28 species)
Pluses and minuses:
+ Bird-attracting lagoon with plenty of species to see
+ Easy site to reach from Darwin
– Lots of birds will be seen only distantly
– Not much scope for exploration – more of a “make a brief stop” location
AUTHOR: ANDY GEE
BIRDERS: ANDY GEE, K-A
Bird Spots 