Wildlife Observations in Queensland: The Grand GC

A pond with a well developed shore margin

Introducing Grand Golf Course: 5 March 2014

Introduction.

The Grand Golf Club is adjacent the Nerang River in the Gold Coast Hinterland approximately 35 minutes southwest from where I live in Sanctuary Cove. It is unique for a golf course. The rolling natural forested hills outlining the manicured fairways and riparian habitat along the river suggest more a wilderness sanctuary than a golf course. Several hectares of eucalypt forest containing spotted gum, stringybarks, and casuarinas merge with copses and corridors of planted native and introduced species bordering the fairways. There is a scattering of very large eucalypts and dead standing trees, which over the years are used and has become home to a variety of animals.

The wetter gully areas are bordered by Melaleucas and along the river, the riparian habitat consist of blue gums, silky oaks, river oaks, flooded gum, and other rain forest species.

A mixture of native forest and cultivates

Wildlife is abundant. The bird diversity consists of well over a 100 species, at least a dozen or two marsupials and mammals including koalas, platypi and humans, several species of reptiles and amphibians and last but certainly not least numerous butterflies but only a few biting insects J.

The riparian vegetation along the Nerang River is a vital corridor for wildlife movement from the surrounding hinterland and acts as permanent and temporary refugia to many of the region’s wildlife denizens.

One of our bird banding sites the road to the dump;

On March 5, 2014, my friend and I started the bird-banding program on the Grand. Its purpose is to document species diversity and occurrences in various habitats present on the Grand and through biometrics determine the breeding health of a number of selected species in an intensely managed landscape. Birds caught on our inaugural day were Rufous Fantail, White-browed Scrubwren, Superb Fairy-wren, White-throated Tree Creeper and numerous other species were observed such as Weebill and Glossy Black Cockatoo.

Stay tuned.