A Long Day in Botany Bay NP - Part 2 - Birds

As already mentioned in Part 1 of the Botany Bay NP excursion story, the trip did not result in the sighting of any new birds, however, some of the "old" birds put on some high quality display worth a bit of memory card activity.

From a bird sighting point of view, the highlight of the day was probably a close'ish encounter with a White-bellied Sea-Eagle. Despite being top of the food chain these birds are surprisingly shy and vigorously try to avoid encounters with humans, wonder why? .... !!! Sometimes the gain is too tempting though and what looked like a dead squid floating around close to shore was too much of a temptation for an adult WBSE, bringing it into photography range.

Having one of these great birds circling above you is a fantastic sight! Cruising slowly down towards the ocean using a minimum of power, nearly disappearing behind the waves, hooking onto its prey and then lifting of with the help of its enormously powerful wings is quite an experience to witness for a Jutlandian farm boy :-D

Otherwise it was mostly the usual suspects hanging out around Boat Harbour. Most of the terns were the crested variety:


A good collection of cormorants, quite sure I saw two Eastern Reef Egrets, Black-fronted Dotterel and a few Pacific Golden Plovers - wonder when the American will show up? ;-)

Walking towards Cape Solander was disappointing from a birding point of view - but great in so many other ways - it might have been slightly too windy for birdwatching, the wind coming from the west also removing any hope of seeing any of the larger pelagic species. Instead I was trying to get some close up shots of some feathered wildlife. Trying to sound like a juicy lizard ... or potentially just looking very harmless seems to do the trick - These pictures have hardly been cropped so if someone wants to count nose hairs I can send the RAW files :-D