Wet weather was forecast for Saturday morning, but nevertheless a group of us met at Waratah Mills Light Rail Station for the Greenway Bird Survey. We did have a bit of light rain most of the morning, but this did not stop is seeing some nice birds.
The highlight was recording a Rufous Fantail. Unfortunately I was not able to photograph it. Continue reading
I decided to make visit to Long Reef on the Northern Beaches. Usually when I visit this headland, I time it to coincide with a low tide and that allows me to walk out onto the rock platform and look for migratory birds. For this visit, the tide was high in the middle of the day, but I was hopeful of seeing the local Ospreys.
I did see two Ospreys late on my visit. They were distant and never got really close. But I did have a very good encounter with a pair of Nankeen Kestrels. The weather forecast was not the best with rain forecast, but it sounded like the worst of would be later in the day. I experienced some short periods of drizzle earlier on and left when it got heaver in the early afternoon. Continue reading
I spent a nice day at Emu Green Reserve on the Nepean River at Emu Plains. There are always a lot of nice birds to look out for at this location, but I guess I was particularly interested in seeing raptors and Rainbow Bee-eaters. I saw quite a few raptors but I only saw a single Rainbow Bee-eater.
Black-shouldered Kites
The first raptors I saw were some Whistling Kites at their nest. I had seen their nest, both last year and also on my previous visit. I look out for it on the walk from Emu Plains Station to the reserve. The nest is located high in a large tree within the grounds of the correctional centre, so you cannot get close to it. It looks like there were two juvenile birds and an adult. Continue reading
On this visit to Malabar Headland, I was joined by Sue and then later also by Valerie. I had invited them out again to see the Peregrine Falcon family after our trip on the 16th November had been relatively quiet, and then the last trip, where I was just by myself, on the 19th November being very good. But as things turned out – on this trip we didn’t see any Peregrine Falcons.
We looked in all their usual ledges and perches and look for them flying but they seemed to be out of the area. We were restricted in which parts of Malabar headland we could visit however as a large part is closed due to trackwork. Eg – we could not walk from Boora Point to Magic Point. But despite the lack of Falcon sightings we still had an interesting trip. Continue reading
It had been a while since I had been to Yeramba Lagoon in Georges River National Park. That trip back in 2017 was like this one – it was a walk on the program of the National Parks Association of NSW led by Brian Everingham.
We did a complex winding circuit walk through the bush near the lagoon that traversed a wide range of habitats. There seems to be a maze of tracks. Most of the bush we saw was in good condition, although there were some weeds in a few places. Here are some photos from the morning – Continue reading
with an adverse weather forecast for the afternoon, I decided to do some local bird photography. I intended to make a quick visit to Sydney Park and then visit Barton Park.
In the end, because of bus timetables, I visited Barton Park first, and I almost missed that – the bus started to detour around due to a closed road – and that meant I would miss my usual stop, so got off early and had to walk a little further. Once there, I first went to landing Lights Wetland. Here are some of the birds I saw at the wetland – Continue reading
From my previous two trips to the headland, I thought the Peregrine Falcon season was coming to a close. But this trip reversed things. I was able to observe and photograph all three members of the family. The adults were active earlier and the juvenile was very active later on.
At the start of the path from the Malabar end, I spotted a Black-shouldered Kite. This was in exactly the same place I thought I had seen one on the previous visit – but that had been a Nankeen Kestrel and then a Brown Goshawk. No mistakes this time. Continue reading
Bob suggested this walk at Blackheath linking Brownes Path, an easy pass into the Grose Valley, that we had both used before a couple of times (see here and here), and then traversing around to Hat Hill Creek and ascending Lews Pass and then climbing out of Hat Hill Canyon via one of the usual passes.
I think Bob was inspired by one of Keith Jebb’s blog posts about a trip linking some of these seldom visited Grose Valley passes. That party had first visited Brownes Path but not followed it down very far, then traversed a little further along the tops and descended down the un-named gully pass that Bob and myself had climbed (see the earlier blog post of mine, linked above). They had then traversed just under the cliffs of Bald Hill and dropped down into Hat Hill Creek near Hat Hill Falls. We knew that the un-named gully was steep and quite unstable – not a nice place to be in, so perhaps it would be better to descend further? Continue reading
It had been a long time since I had been able to visit the Central Coast Wetland at Wyong. I travelled up by train and spent a great day at the site.
Here are some of the birds I saw. First near the large main pond. A lot of the birds were far away – on the far side or too far away for photos. I looked for any visitors but did not see any unusual birds. Here are some more common ones – Continue reading
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? Continue reading
