Birding the Top End: Day 4

The day began early as always, as we drove out at the crack of dawn along the Arnhem Highway to a site that Where to Find Birds in the Northern Territory said was the nearest potential site for Gouldian Finch. Unfortunately, we arrived there to find a massive quarry, and I saw absolutely nothing of note. For any other users of said book, it is almost certain that we just butchered the directions, so I cannot make any actual statement on how good the site listed as 'Mary River pools' actually is for Gouldian Finch.
Having realised our inability to follow directions, we doubled back to Adelaide River to try for Mangrove Golden Whistler and potentially Arafura Fantail. Although we came across a decent feeding flock, we dipped on both species, though we did find variable trillers, white-gaped honeyeaters, lemon-bellied flycatchers, a rufous-banded honeyeater and a pair of broad-billed flycatchers. 

VARIED TRILLER

We drove further back to make the obligatory stop at Fogg Dam. On the road in we managed to tick a red-backed kingfisher perching on a wire. We stopped first at the carpark to walk the Woodlands to Waterlilies track. The forest proved extremely birdy, with several tame brown whistlers that whistled back whenever I whistled at them. Yellow orioles, rufous whistlers, orange-footed scrubfowl and the same variety of honeyeaters seen previously were all present. The wetlands held a brown goshawk (potentially a collared sparrowhawk, I don't trust in my ability to tell one from the other), along with Rajah shelducks, comb-crested jacanas, forest kingfishers (some of which I tried and failed to turn into little kingfishers), swamp harriers, whiskered terns and various egrets. We dipped here on the hoped for white-browed crake.
Driving along the dam wall provided much of the same, along with a distant blue-winged kookaburra. We saw a few feral buffalo from the observation tower at the end of the road before driving back.

RED-BACKED KINGFISHER

YELLOW ORIOLE

BROWN WHISTLER

RADJAH SHELDUCK

COMB-CRESTED JACANA

BLUE-WINGED KOOKABURRA

As we neared Darwin, we made a brief detour to Channel Island, where we hoped to find great-billed herons. From the top of a jetty on the bank of the island furthest from the mainland, we saw a large, dark slaty-grey heron fly across the water, which after some deliberation we ticked as a great-billed heron. However our fear of crocodiles initially stopped us from pursuing it, and despite walking across more of the island we could not retrace it. Yellow oriole, red-tailed black cockatoo and a lone whistling kite were also observed on the island before we gave up and made our way back to the hotel.
Later that evening we travelled to Stokes Hill Wharf to have dinner and see if any Asian gull-billed terns could be observed roosting. We saw a brahminy kite being harassed by silvergulls, along with many masked lapwings. Due to the wharf being off-limits we could not get very close to the roosting birds there, but were able to identify Australian terns, little terns, great crested terns and great cormorants. Coincidentally we also lost our hotel keys here, something that threw me into a bit of a panic thinking we might suddenly get robbed. We were unable to refind them, but we also went completely unrobbed, so this proved far more unimportant than I feared.
Exhausted by my panicking and a day of good birdwatching, we ate some Thai and called it a night.