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Saturday, 28 September, 2013

 

I had a very nice birding day today.  I am staying on an early schedule, which is great, and it hasn’t been hard so far.  I was exhausted again last night, and hit the sack about 9 PM, after making myself stay up that late.  I was up this morning at 5, and I had plenty of time to do my morning stuff and make a lunch for today, before I was picked up at my hotel at 8 by a Sydney birder by the name of Allan.

 

We headed to north Sydney, to a place called Warriewood Wetlands.  There is water there, and boardwalks, but it is actually a piece of remnant rainforest.  There is an attached reserve called Irrawong Reserve, and we walked through that, too.  Here is where we entered Warriewood.

 

It was kind of slow at first, with few birds and little bird sound.  It was a pleasant walk, though, and we saw a few common birds.  I picked up ROYAL SPOONBILL for my trip list, and I’m sorry I didn’t try for a picture.  I’ll be sure to get a picture of that strange looking species later in the trip.

 

I soon added AUSTRALIAN BRUSH-TURKEY to my list.  The males rake up huge piles of leaf litter into mounds, and then hope to attract a female who will lay her eggs in the mound, after mating with the male, of course.  I presume this was a male, making his mound, as it is a bit early for actual breeding, according to Allan.

 

There were a couple of little birds flitting around, and when we got good looks at them, Allan identified them as BROWN THORNBILLS.  I could see that, too, eventually.  There are a half dozen or more thornbills over here, and I need help to tell them apart, so it was great to have Allan with me to identify them.  I might have worked out what they were by myself, but I would have had to consult my field guide and it would have been a laborious process, if the birds stuck around long enough.

 

We moved on, and the next bird of interest was another small one.  This one I could identify, though, and I added SPOTTED PARDALOTE to my list.  It is a common bird, but in my experience, they are usually up high in trees, and they are very active and hard to get a picture of.  There were two of them today, and they were very active, but they stuck around low, including on the ground.  Spotted Pardalotes dig a burrow on the side of a hill and build their nest in the burrow.  These two seemed to be starting to dig their burrow.  I was really pleased to actually get some pictures of these very cute little birds.

 

 

I think the top picture is a female and the bottom is a male.  The male has a yellow throat.  Seen up close, they were amazingly delicate little birds.

 

One of the birds that you hear everywhere is hard to actually see, as they skulk in the brush and are very shy.  We got great looks at a pair of EASTERN WHIPBIRDS, but no pictures.  Like I said, they skulk in the bushes, and they don’t stay still long.  Maybe I’ll get a picture of one before the trip is over.  I’ll hear their very loud and distinctive call everywhere, no doubt.  They are very attractive birds, dark brown and white, with a pointed crest.

 

I also added WHITE-THROATED TREECREEPER, another common bird.  They feed by “creeping” up a tree trunk or along a branch.  There are other treecreepers here as well, and this is the most common species, I think.

 

By that time, we were into the adjacent reserve, Irrawong Reserve.  There was a bird I had missed at Royal National Park, and it is one that I won’t see once I leave the Sydney area.  They do live in the Irrawong Reserve, but Allan hadn’t held out much hope of seeing one.  But, surprise of surprises, we had one only maybe 15 feet off the boardwalk, and we got to watch it for 30 seconds or so before she realized we were there, and scuttled off into the bush.  Oh yes, the name of the species – SUPERB LYREBIRD.  I sure wish I had been quicker with my camera, but I was too slow.

 

We heard some loud bird calls out ahead of us, and Allan identified them as belonging to another species I wanted very much to see.  A little farther up the trail, we saw three CHANNEL-BILLED CUCKOOS squawking loudly and chasing each other around.  They are very large birds and very strange looking, with huge bills.  I had only ever seen them once before, and that was a distant flyover.  This was my first look at perched birds.  Again I was too slow with my camera, though, and they flew off, squawking.  Cuckoos are interesting because they lay their eggs in other birds’ nests, and when the young cuckoos hatch, they push the other birds out of the nest, and the host parent birds don’t seem to notice the difference, and they feed the cuckoo and raise it until it flies away.  The Channel-billed Cuckoo is so large that they lay their eggs in currawong nests, and the currawongs raise the cuckoos.  The two species look totally different, and it is amazing to me that the parents don’t seem to notice the difference.  I expect to see a number of other cuckoo species on this trip.

 

There were a couple of kookaburras today, and I got this picture of one of them.  I just like that kookaburras, for some reason.

 

That is a Laughing Kookaburra, and I hope to see two other species that share the name kookaburra.  All kookaburras are members of the kingfisher family, and I expect to see a number of different kingfisher species, too.

 

There was an Eastern Yellow Robin flying around and perching for us.  Even though I showed a mediocre picture of one a couple of days ago this guy was posing for me, and I liked the lighting and the pose.  So, here is another Eastern Yellow Robin.

 

Here is a picture of Allan on one of the boardwalks at Warriewood.

 

And here is a close up of Allan.

 

As we were about to leave Warriewood, I spotted another little bird, and this one turned out to be a YELLOW THORNBILL.  Again, I probably would have worked it out on my own, and that was my first guess, but having Allan along to confirm it saved time and hassle.

 

Back at the car, we had a little snack, and I got this picture of a Galah.  I counted Galah on Wednesday, having seen a couple of them from the car, but this was my first close view.  They are quite common, so they don’t get much respect from birders, but I think they are a very attractive member of the cockatoo family.

 

Speaking of birds that don’t get no respect from birders, the Eurasian Coot falls into that category.  They are very common and not colorful at all, so no one pays any attention to them. There was one today, just off the boardwalk, and the sun was nice on him, and his red eye showed nicely, so I took his picture.

 

I also got this picture of an Australian Magpie near where we parked the car.  I had been eating an apple, and he was quite interested in me.

 

So, having added 9 species to my trip list at Warriewood/Irrawong, we moved on.  I had read that avocets had been reported at a place called Dee Why Lagoon, and it wasn’t all that far away, so Allan obligingly drove us over there.  The water level wasn’t really suitable for shorebirds, it turned out, but I got this picture of cormorants that added two more species to my trip list.  The larger one with the white on it, on the left, is a PIED CORMORANT, and the others are LITTLE BLACK CORMORANTS.

 

I also got my first BLACK SWAN of the trip there.  We saw them again later, and I have a picture to show later.

 

Next we headed over to Homebush Bay, which is adjacent to the site of the 2000 Olympics.  The whole area is now referred to as Olympic Park or Bicentennial Park.  We parked the car and walked to a bird hide that overlooks some mud flats.  A bird hide is a structure that has benches in it, and slits to look out, to watch birds without disturbing them.  On the way to the hide, I picked up DARTER, a long-necked member of the cormorant family.  I’ll have a picture of a Darter before the trip is over, but the one today was a juvenile, and it looked kind of scruffy.

 

Here is a picture of what you see when you look out of the bird hide at Homebush Bay.

 

This was my first chance to use my scope on the trip, and we scanned the mud and water out there to see what we could see.  Our target was Red-necked Avocet, but there weren’t any there today.  I probably will miss that species now, based on where I am going.  There were a lot of BLACK-WINGED STILTS, though.  Here are several of them.

 

There were also BAR-TAILED GODWITS, SHARP-TAILED SANDPIPERS, a couple of MASKED LAPWINGS, a number of GREY TEAL, a single RUDDY TURNSTONE, 2 or 3 PACIFIC GOLDEN-PLOVERS, and a single LITTLE EGRET.  They are all common birds, but it was a good haul for my trip list.

 

We moved on to another pond and found nothing new, but I did get a picture of a Black Swan family that I like.  The lighting was terrible, but I liked the way they moved down the pond in such a stately manner.

 

Swans seem like such elegant birds.  I’ll get better pictures of them later in the trip, no doubt, as I will see many of them.

 

We made one more stop after that, at a pond in the grounds of Bicentennial Park.  I picked up a common duck there, called HARDHEAD, or White-eyed Duck.  They are pretty plain, and I didn’t bother with a picture.  I did get a picture of a Welcome Swallow there, though, and I will finish off the pictures for the day with that.

 

I needed to get back to central Sydney to pick up a rental car, so we drove back across town.  I was surprised how far it was today, to the various places we went.  I guess Sydney is a spread out city, and it was deceptive on the map, to me.

 

Allan dropped me off at Hertz, which is only five or six blocks from my hotel.  I got my car with no problem, and I am very pleased with it.  They had promised an All Wheel Drive SUV, but in the past, they have used their “or equivalent” weasel words to give me a car I didn’t care for.  Not Hertz specifically but other companies.  Anyway, I got a Nissan X-Trail, which is just exactly what I wanted.  It is even white, which is my preference because it is cooler in the sun.  I can put it in 2 WD for driving on paved roads, and AWD for unpaved roads if I want to, not that I am supposed to drive it on unpaved roads, mind you.  But, just in case I accidentally take it somewhere like that, and run into mud or sand, I will appreciate having the AWD.  I like the higher clearance of an SUV, too.

 

I managed to make it back to my hotel, where I had arranged for a parking place for tonight.  Allan had told me how to do it easily, with all left turns, which are the “easy” turns over here, since you are driving on the wrong side of the road.  The parking garage here at the hotel is ridiculously cramped and the parking places are absurdly small.  They assigned me a place, and when I got to it and tried to back in, I found I could do it, with a lot of care, but there was then about three inches of clearance on both sides of my car.  There was no way anyone could get in or out of my car or the ones next to me.  I left it sticking out into the aisle and walked back up to reception, to tell them it was impossible.  When I got there, I found that one of the clerks had already gone down to the parking garage to find me, to tell me to park in another two places, another level down.  I guess they had realized that it was impossible, or maybe there are cameras in the parking garage, and they had seen me struggling to get into the ridiculously narrow spot.  Come to think of it, I would bet it was the latter – the camera thing.  Anyway, they assigned me two places and said I could use them both, so I managed to get the car into those two places, one level farther down.

 

So, that was my birding adventure for today.  As the day went on, I realized I wasn’t feeling great, and it seemed to go beyond the jet lag I had been dealing with all week.  Eventually I realized that I am coming down with a cold.  Damn.  I hate colds any time, and I don’t get them often, but getting one on a trip is a real bummer.  I’ll just have to deal with it, obviously, but I don’t like it, and it will probably slow me down for a few days.  I have been allocating myself just two ounces of my overproof Bundy rum each night, but tonight I am giving myself three ounces, purely for medicinal purposes, of course.  I’m sure the orange-mango juice I mix it with will help my cold, too.

 

So, when all was said and done today, I added 22 species to my trip list, not a bad total at all.  The Superb Lyrebird was outstanding, the Channel-billed Cuckoos were excellent, and I loved the close up views and pictures of the little Spotted Pardalotes.  Brown Thornbill and Yellow Thornbill were both great, too.  That brings my trip total to 88 species, of which only one is a lifer.  Considering that I don’t normally do any real birding while I’m in Sydney, that is a really excellent jump start to my trip.

 

Tomorrow I head south, to Jamberoo, near a reserve called Barren Grounds.  I plan to stop a few places along the way, and maybe I can pick up a few more trip birds.  There are several special birds at Barren Grounds that I will look for on Monday, then.