Malabar Headland – 16 November 2021

Another visit to Malabar Headland with the intention of seeing the Peregrine Falcon family. This time I had invited Sue and Valerie to join me. After my previous visit being relatively quiet, I thought that time to see the juvenile Peregrine Falcon may not be too long before it ranged further away from the nest area.

As it turned out we hardly saw any Peregrine Falcons. We saw the juvenile for a short period of time during our visit, and that was all. But, on this visit, the wind was blowing from the south, which is not common, and so perhaps the birds were not at their usual perches?

The day started off well. Valerie drove to Malabar and both Sue and myself were grateful of a lift. At the carpark, we spotted a raptor flying over the nearby Sydney Water plant. I thought it was the Black-shouldered Kite that I had seen in that area fair bit. We could only see a silhouette of a hovering bird. But when I got home and looked at my photos – I could see I was wrong. Doubly wrong! There were two raptors. The first was Nankeen Kestrel –

The Kestrel dived down and was replaced by a Brown Goshawk.

Soon after the Goshawk dived down and was replaced by the Kestrel.

Out at Boora Point, we scanned the usual places the Peregrine Falcons perch but could not locate any of the birds. The extant we could walk along the cliffs was limited by the track from Boora Point to Magic Point being closed for track upgrading. Perhaps the birds were all perched near Dead Mans Gulch?

We were later joined by Michael from the Greenway Birdos. Again we looked with no success. Later, after lunch we spotted the juvenile Peregrine Falcon flying in and saw it perched on the cliffs.

It didn’t stay too long before it flew off.

We waited around for a while, but it didn’t seem to return, so we too left early.

Here are a few more photos, first a wasp –

And this White’s Skink lives in the same rubble that the Red-bellied Black Snake is often seen near.

And a Jacky Dragon –

It had been pleasant day spent on the magnificent sandstone cliffs, but poor for whales, dolphins and Falcons.