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As I mentioned in my article about the first day we spent on Fraser Island, while we were walking back through the rainforest to Central Station, we saw a bird which my bird book suggests is a Wompoo.

This bird was good enough to hang around while we took some photographic evidence to help identification too (including several shots where the flash didn’t go off or were badly taken by me) before flying away.

This sighting may or may not be significant for several reasons.

My parents had kindly left behind a few books about Australian wildlife following their visit last year, including one about birds, which I used to identify this bird.

When we were in Townsville, we visited their excellent library to use their free internet connection, and while wondering about in the reference section I discovered two books which suggest that seeing a Wompoo on Fraser Island was out of the ordinary, but first I’ll explain some of the information I gleaned on Wompoos:

Fruit Doves or Pigeons?

The first book I picked up was written solely about pigeons and fruit doves, and I quickly turned to the pages on Wompoos. This was a much more scientific publication than my field guide and suggested that the categorisation of Wompoos as ‘Fruit Doves’ – which many do – is inaccurate. According to this book, they are correctly considered pigeons.

As so often with reading and research, the more I read, the more confusing the picture became as I looked in the index of the second book about doves and pigeons under “Wompoo” and was told “see Fruit Doves”…

Whether or not they are fruit doves or pigeons, there is one thing upon which both of these books, and my field guide agree: the locations where they can be found.

The scientific book explained that there are 7 different types of Wompoo, three of which can be found in Papua New Guinea and the other four in the Australian mainland. Without delving into the scientific names and marginally different species of Wompoo, this book stated that Wompoos are only to be found in established rainforests (as did the other book on fruit doves).

None of the books listed Fraser Island as a place in which Wompoos can be found. And find one we did. Is this the first photographed Wompoo on Fraser Island?

It might be. Irrespective of whether it is the first sighting of a Wompoo on Fraser Island, or whether it is a new species (it does look different in both size and colour from the photos and drawings I have seen) the fact it is there does suggest just how established the small band of rainforest on Fraser Island is.

One fairly major difference is the colour of the tail – all publications agree that it is “emerald green” though that of the bird we saw was, from memory and from this photograph, appeared to be blue.

I’m going to email someone with more expertise about this when I have a moment and will update this page with their answer.