Cape York Birdwatching Safari: Iron Range to Cairns

Fly from Cairns to Lockhart River, about an hour and a half up the coast of the peninsula, where your guide meets the flight. It is a short drive to The Greenhoose, on the edge of Kutini-Payamu (Iron Range) National Park, and after lunch the first birding starts in the lodge's tropical gardens and private rainforest trails. Birds that take a week of driving to reach on other trips are often around the lodge on the first afternoon.

Overnight: The Greenhoose.
Meals: L/D.

The first of three full days in the park. Kutini-Payamu holds a mosaic of habitats close together: lowland rainforest, tall gallery forest along the creeks, tropical woodland, heath on the rocky ridges, mangroves and palm-fringed beaches looking out over the Coral Sea. The morning goes to the headline birds: palm cockatoo, eclectus parrot, and the park's two birds-of-paradise, the magnificent riflebird and trumpet manucode. Two restricted-range bowerbirds live here as well, the fawn-breasted bowerbird and black-eared catbird. Through the day the group also works for spotted whistling-duck, red-cheeked parrot, yellow-billed kingfisher, chestnut-breasted cuckoo, frill-necked monarch, white-faced robin, northern scrub-robin, yellow-legged flyrobin, tropical scrubwren, and green-backed and tawny-breasted honeyeaters.

Overnight: The Greenhoose. Meals: B/L/D.

The group moves between the park's key sites, among them Gordon Creek, West Claudie River, the Old Coen Track and Cook's Hut campground. This is good country for species that range more widely in Australia but are often easiest here, such as wompoo, superb and rose-crowned fruit-doves, noisy pitta, white-eared monarch, grey whistler and yellow-breasted boatbill, and for Cape York subspecies of double-eyed fig-parrot, Australian brush-turkey, little bronze-cuckoo and red-browed finch. The night walk looks for Papuan and marbled frogmouths, large-tailed and white-throated nightjars and, with luck, rufous or masked owl, along with common spotted and southern common cuscus, striped possum, Krefft's glider, Cape York melomys, northern brown bandicoot, bare-backed fruit bat and green tree and scrub pythons.

Overnight: The Greenhoose. Meals: B/L/D.

The last full day in Iron Range adds the coast. The mangroves and beaches around Portland Roads and Chilli Beach draw waders and terns to feed and roost on the sand and rocks, and the fruiting palms and beach almond trees are worth scanning slowly for palm cockatoos. The rest of the day is kept for anything still missing, with the guide choosing sites based on what has been seen so far.

Overnight: The Greenhoose. Meals: B/L/D.

After a last early walk at The Greenhoose, the group crosses the West Claudie River and climbs to Tozer's Gap, the northern end of the Great Dividing Range, with long views back over the ranges, heath and forest. The heath here is where to find the white-streaked honeyeater, the first of Cape York's two endemic birds, among carnivorous tropical pitcher plants. Then it is south on the Peninsula Developmental Road, with lunch at Archer River Roadhouse, to Musgrave Roadhouse for the night.

Overnight: Musgrave Roadhouse. Meals: B/L/D.

A full day in the savannah. Rinyirru (Lakefield) National Park, at around 544,000ha the second-largest national park in Queensland, is a patchwork of tropical woodland, riverside forest, lagoons and grassy plains studded with termite mounds. Targets include pale-headed rosella, red-winged parrot, red goshawk, black-backed butcherbird, yellow-tinted honeyeater, red-browed pardalote, great bowerbird, lemon-bellied flycatcher, lagoon waterbirds, and star, crimson, masked and black-throated finches, with agile wallaby, northern nail-tail wallaby and antilopine wallaroo also possible. Time is set aside at Artemis Station, a Shephard family property since 1911, for the endangered golden-shouldered parrot, which nests by digging chambers into termite mounds. At dusk, the group waits for large-tailed and spotted nightjars.

Overnight: Fairview Station. Meals: B/L/D.

Depending on sightings, the morning may include a return to Artemis Station for the golden-shouldered parrot before the long drive south to Cairns, with stops for birds along the way and a picnic lunch. The tour finishes in Cairns in the evening.

Meals: B/L.