This was a nice day out with Valerie and Sue. We decided to head to Royal National Park and walked down Lady Carrington Drive to Bola Creek and then look for fungi as well as keeping our eyes open for birds and orchids.
We had a very interesting trip. The fungi was not that abundant although we did find some interesting species.
Here is some of the fungi was saw along Bola Creek –
Hygrocybe miniata
Clavaria zollingeri
The nest one is interesting. It was spotted by Valerie. It was only small, but it looks to me that it could be Cordyceps capitata. This rarely seen species has a truffle as a host.
This is Marasmius elegans –
And these are Stinkhorn “eggs”.
Clavulinopsis sulcata –
Porpolomopsis lewelliniae –
And now for some of the birds. On the way up Bola Creek we spotted two Superb Lyrebirds. Here is one –
While we were watching this one, the second one gave us an absolutely amazing bird symphony – a long series of imitation calls of other birds including Kookaburras and Whipbirds.
While walking back we saw this Eastern Yellow Robin –
Then we spotted the pair of Superb Lyrebirdsagain. Now we could see they were an adult and juvenile.
Here the juvenile is being fed by its parent –
The juvenile was foraging, bit not too successfully. Here it has some bark –
This time, I was able to photograph it being fed a lot better –
After lunch, we walked around the Forest Path. Along the way we heard a lot of nice birds and saw a number of them. Here is a Rufous Fantail –
And a Black-faced Monarch –
This one is a Lewin’s Honeyeater –
On the way home, I checked facebook, and saw that a friend Steven, who lives at Engadine has spotted a large male Koala. It was close to the road and he had offered to show it to people. I called him, and found he was just leaving the area. He indicted that it would be very hard to spot without being shown where it was.
But as we were passing by that area, we decided to accept the challenge and have look for it ourselves. We parked and were about to set off along the fire trail he specified, when we bumped into small group that looeds like they had just been to see it. They had, and gave us some useful location advice. But added that it would be still very hard to spot. It was! But luckily for us, one of that group, Tom, had come back down the fire road and went well out of his way to show us where the Koala was.
This was a great way to end our excursion. Many thanks to Tom, and also to Steve, as well as to Valerie for the driving.