Bicentennial Park Visit – 12 January 2018

I spent a pleasant afternoon wandering around the pools and foreshore at Bicentennial Park with my camera.

Superb Fairy Wren

I was mainly looking for birds, but the overwhelming noise was from cicadas. 

And here are some other invertebrates –

Most of the birds I spotted were the same as ones I had seen before at this park.

Great Egret –

Superb Fairy Wrens –

Red Browed Finches –

Black winged Stilts –

Avocets –

A Black Fronted Dotterel –

A White Faced Heron –

A Cormorant was sitting on an object in the bay near one of the wrecks –

Nearby, I heard an unusual bird call in the mangroves, and when I investigated I spotted a Buff Banded Rail –

On my way out, I stopped and spent time watching and photographing a pelican doing some fishing near the main inlet/outlet stream.

Its success rate did not seem that high. But then it caught a fish –

But it did not seem able to swallow the fish and ended up dropping it back into the water.

I kept up the watch. It soon caught another fish.

But the same thing seemed to happen –

This kept on going –

In all my watching, the pelican seemed to catch four fish and then drop them all back into the water. Was it just clumsy? Or perhaps just practising its fishing? Or perhaps, and I think more likely, and suggested by Ken – the fish it caught were pufferfish – which are poisonous and so rejected. It was certainly interesting to watch.