I joined Brian Everingham and others from the National Parks Association of NSW on a walk through the Curra Moors of Royal National Park. August is a good time to visit the park for the wildflowers, and indeed on this walk we were greeted by an amazing display.
In particular, two plants were incredible in their prolific flowers – the Grass Trees and the Gymea Lilies. Continue reading
Another trip to the Zoo. I had several motivations for this trip – one was to See the new baby Gorilla. The other was to try out new firmware for one of my camera bodies and see how well the “animal eye autofocus” worked.
When you go to the Zoo to see new arrivals like the Tiger cubs or the new baby Gorilla, you need to be prepared to spend some time and make multiple visits to their enclosures, or even multiple visits to the Zoo. Continue reading
It is getting near the end of the fungi season, but due to lack of rain, the fungi that has appeared has been poor in a lot of places. But the northern suburbs of Sydney have had more rain than other areas, so I thought it worth having another look at Ferndale Park at Chatswood. I was pleasantly surprised with what I found.
One of the key species that I had been looking for had finally appeared in reasonable numbers. This was the Ferndale Park – Green-Pink Waxcap (Humidicutis sp.). That was particularly nice to find. I had seen it twice before this year – 2 old dried out specimens on one trip, and a single one on another. Here are some of what I found this time – Continue reading
This was a full day spent along the Cooks River. I started near the Boat Harbour and then cycled all the way to Botany Bay and back. I spent most of the time at Barton Park.
Near the Boat Harbour, I spotted one of the Tawny Frogmouths. This one was in a tree on the south side of the river. Continue reading
The bushcare group that I am in spent a morning weeding at Barrenjoey Headland. This is one of the regular places that we work at. After meeting up at the carpark near Pittwater Road, we then headed to the NPWS land at the north end of the spit. We split onto two groups – one weeded near the climbing area, and the other, the one I was in, walking around the headland near sea level and removing weeds as we go.
We mainly removed Bitou Bush and some Asparagus Fern, and some Lantana. It was good to see that a fair proportion of the area near the sea is relatively free of weeds. It is an endangered ecological community. Continue reading
I like to photograph the birds at local venues – areas near where I live. It is always interesting to see what birds are there, and also challenging to see if you can spot rarer and more exotic birds that occasionally pass through. One major place I have somewhat neglected has been Sydney Park at St Peters.
I spent a morning at the park. The birds were a bit quiet on my visit. Perhaps I should have arrived earlier? (I was there from about 10 am to 12:30 pm). But there were still some nice birds around. This photos shows a wide range – Black Swans with their chicks, Purple Swamphens, Moorhens and Coots – Continue reading
I spent a full and very pleasant day at the Northern Beaches area photographing birds. I travelled up by the B-line bus and then used local buses to move from site to site.
My first stop was at a sporting field, where I wanted to photograph Ospreys at their nest. When I arrived, I could just see one Osprey in the nest. I assumed it was sitting on eggs. I thought it worth waiting a while to see if the other Osprey returned with a fish. While waiting, I started taking some photos of the Welcome Swallows wizzing around looking for fish. Continue reading
It had been a while since I had been to Bola Creek to check out the fungi. Digi Dave had suggested a day out photographing, and Bola Creek fitted the bill.
Bactridium sp.
I was not sure what conditions would be like. The previous visit had been quite good – there had been recent good falls of rain and the ground was quite moist. Good conditions for fungi? Well, reasonable but not brilliant conditions on that visit. We did find some nice fresh fungi – but it was out in some of the drier areas. This new visit turned out to be much poorer. The ground was very dry indeed and we found very little out. But we did spot quite a few red waxcaps – although most of them were a bit dried out. Continue reading
I spent an afternoon at Tempe – visiting the Tempe Wetlands and also Tempe Reserve looking for and photographing birds. The birds did not seem very active, so my photos were a bit limited.
Here are some of my photos – Continue reading
This was another very good day of bird photography at Malabar Headland National Park. My main interest was the pair of resident Peregrine Falcons – but they didn’t appear active until close to 2 pm. So I spent the morning looking for whales and other birds.
Whales were poor. I probably saw about ten, but they were all a long way out to sea and none were breaching. I did see two pods of dolphins. One of them was relatively close but there were not many dolphins in the pod, and it was hard to try and predict where a dolphin would appear. Continue reading
