Life Of Allan

Capertee Valley - Road Trip with Danish Visitors - Part 1

2011-12-03T16:50:00.000-08:00

A visit by a couple of good lads from back home is always an excellent excuse for an excursion. These lads in particular being keen campers and having a a healthy interest in nature, there was no doubt that we needed to go bush. During their first week in Sydney, I kept working and they could potter around at the beach, loose the first layer of Danish winter skin and cover most of what city has to offer. At the beginning of the second week, we found ourselves in the roaring Magna with that long, shiny, masculine bonnet pointing in the direction of the outback.Capertee Valley was once again the perfect pit-stop for a straight-from-work Sydney departure. Apart from the months of darkest winter Capertee can easily be reached before night fall as long as you get out of Sydney in decent time - and it is advisable, since the drive into the valley is winding, narrow, dark and teeming with wildlife.We arrived in good time, despite of the obligatory bumper to bumper driving across the Blue Mountains - believe it or not, they have been fixing that road all of the years I have been living in Australia - 6 that is. Capertee Valley was firing on all cylinders though, as the sun sets in the west the shadows move longer and the cliff wall comes alive in orange, red and brown. An excellent spot for three hungry Danes to consume some camping tucker.Capertee Valley always delivers on the wildlife front, having used most of the afternoon getting sorted with the tents, dinner and wandering around town, we very left with the (smaller?) creatures of the night. There was a superior selection of insects about and with a fast macro lens, a fully charged flash and someone to help holding the spotlight, I at least had heaps of fun.Highlight of the night happened while we were gathered around the camping table. There we were telling each other the usual good(!) old stories and sorting out all the trouble of the world, when suddenly in the moon light (supported by the faint light from a couple of head torches) a shadow dropped from the roof above us - it was one of the largest huntsman spiders I have ever seen - I think it took first place for both of my friends :-) The huntsman seemed surprised about the attention it received. After having reached the ground it decided to sit still and we managed to get a few photos before we left it to go to bed. I am sure those tent zips where checked more than once that night.
The humidity and light at a campsite bathroom creates an absolute tip top hotspot for a bit of insect photography. The entire food chain is represented from the smallest tiniest flying fluff to larger fluff eating creations ... I am absolutely aware that this is a pretty poor naming efforts, my only defense is that no matter how much I love my insect book, I could not justify to include it in my only 23 kg of luggage when I left Australia - I am sure that it will make it next time around though.Great sleeping in the bush! .. and great waking up there as well, some porridge in the morning and a coffee while the sun rises, pure joy! We still needed quite a few hours of of driving before we would arrive at our furthest away destination - Gundabooka National Park. Early morning at the campsite bathroom we spotted another top predator insect - one of those eating the ones that eat the flying fluff - a praying mantis. What more can you hope for? :-)

Blogging Again :-)

2011-12-03T15:56:00.000-08:00

Finally, I feel that I have time for blogging again. Quite a few things have happened over the last half year or so, and I have found myself in a situation of having fantastic exciting things happening all around me and no time to write about them. Luckily, I have managed to take photos of most of the shenanigans and with a Danish winter approaching there will be many dark hours to kill in front of the little computer.Since my last post I have finished my job in Sydney, used 2 months traveling around Australia and moved toDenmark, where I now live and work. Much of my Danish life does, luckily enough, not qualify for the blog, hence I will have more time writing about those amazing two months of exploring Australia. I took close to 15000 photos (14418 to be exact), drove just over 20000 km and had more gnocchi dinners than I will admit. I had snow on the tent on my first night in the Blue Mountains and had a swarm of mosquitoes attaching a month later in Kakadu National Park. I saw thewhitest beaches of Australia, the reddest dirt WA has to offer, the darkest green Queensland rainforest and a sky so blue that I sometimes still wonder how I could leave :-)All good, I will get cranking and get some blog posts flying. There will be a few posts before I get to tell about my big trip, hopefully I will be up to date soon. Happy reading and thanks for tuning in - Cheers Allan

Long Reef - Wandering Tattler Twitch

2011-07-30T13:26:00.000-07:00

Earlier in the year I was out twitching the Wandering Tattler at Long Reef - as was the rest of Sydney. Long Reef is prime wader and Mark Young habitat, if you have not yet seen Mark's blog about the life around Long Reef, then press here or follow the link in the "My Blog List" to the right.

I had once again teamed up with Jarrod, who is normally an excellent early starter, but this Saturday we managed to truly mess up when we decided to begin our journey midday - making your way to the northern beaches through Sydney traffic a Sunday midday is less fun than filing your tax return and it takes longer time!

Well, after some very slow driving we finally arrived and eagerly pushed up the hill to overlook the reef. For some reason it felt like the entire world had decided to make this day a struggle for us - in reality all our troubles were probably self-inflicted due to exceptional bad planning - not only was it high tide and the reef flooded, just as we reached the top of the hill it started raining cats and dogs! In combination with the howling winds from the east, long reef did in no way look like a place to to spend a Sunday afternoon and attempting to find a dark Wandering Tattler in these conditions seemed a little foolish.

Somehow we had to justify a nearly 3 hours drive through Sydney traffic and we went down to inspect the tiny area of the reef that was still accessible. A few common birds where scattered around on the sand and rocks, but after a quick inspection we got alerted to the presence of a few exciting blue creatures caught in the shallow waters surrounding the reef.

A first for me was the incredible beautiful Glaucus atlanticus, aka blue sea slug. Not a large creature, but one of the prettiest water living characters I have seen during my time in Australia.

We saw quite a good number of these small blue gems of the ocean and a fearless Jarrod even assisted a couple of the stranded ones in making their way back to deeper water. Indeed us humans should do what we can to help this blue nudibranch, since its main food source is Blue Bottle, Physalia utriculus, and blue button, Porpita porpita - see the photos below. Both of these blue stingers are common around Sydney and the sting of the blue bottle in particular is an unpleasant experience that many Sydneysiders will have to endure when swimming in the sea on summer days with a easterly blowing. When the Glaucus atlanticus eats its victims it is capably of storing the most poisonous parts of its food and up concentrate the venom in the very tip of its "fingers". The means that the Glaucus atlanticus can deliver an even more vicious sting than the stingers it feeds on .. I am not sure Jarrod knew that when he volunteered to model in the photo above :-D

Feeling our luck changing after the success with the Glaucus atlanticus we once again started considering if there was indeed a chance of seeing the Wandering Tattler – the reason we drove to Long Reef in the first place. If the bird was still at the reef it would clearly have searched refuge at the still exposed rocky section now separated from the mainland by a ca. 100 meters flooded area … well that was there the bird was, then that was where we had to go to see it!

Luck follows the crazy – Danish saying “held følger de tossede” – Arriving at the rocky outcrop there was at first nothing indicating that we would be able to see or even less likely get decent pictures of the Wandering Tattler, weather had worsened, it had started raining again, that does not matter much when you are soaking wet up till above your knees, but the exposed reef was also significantly more windy than it had been ashore and I had nearly given up, when a tattler looking bird suddently took off from a sheltered part of the reef where we would have had no chance to see it if I had decided to stay.

It looped up and around the southern end of the reef and for a couple of seconds it looked like it was aiming at landing at our feet, just towards the end of its approach it seemed to suddenly realize that a couple of humans had entered its habitat and it broke off the approach and landed on a rock few meters away – There was our Wandering Tattler slightly confused a few meters in front of us, “wandering” up and down the rock as a model on the red carpet – Luck did indeed follow the ones with wet feet this Sunday afternoon at Long Reef.

All good, we got much more out of this rainy Sunday afternoon than we deserved and a new bird significantly adds to the joy of driving home through Sunday afternoon Sydney traffic.

Botany Bay National Park - Quails, Spider Wasp and Red Knot Twitching

2011-07-01T02:05:00.000-07:00

One of the spots around Sydney that I return to over and over again is Botany Bay National Park – the southern part between Boat Harbour and Kurnell in particular. Earlier in the year I managed to get down there a couple of weekends in a row, firstly because I truly enjoy the walk along the coast and find the area down there slightly more exotic and less crowded than the coastal scrub around Coogee. If that was not enough, then with the presence of a Red Knot at Boat Harbour I was easily convinced.

I saw my first Brown Quail in Botany Bay National Park, and once again I had the joy of getting up close and friendly with a few BQs. You need luck to get in close, since you often do not realize the presence of these small fluff balls until they break cover in front of you and take off with the sound, and speed, of a gun salute .. leaving you behind wondering which type of quail you had just missed seeing.

On the way out from Boat harbour, I had seen something take off in front of me when I was close to the lighthouse, so on my way back I slowed down and took a careful look down the path – there was a little Brown Quail family pottering around on the path slowly making their way towards me. How easy was that, I hid behind a bend and even had time to change lens back to the Bigma (I had been using the macro for the photos of the Jewel Spider above). As they approached I could stand still and get excellent close-ups without moving, only as I tried to engage the flash it dawned on the quails that they were not alone, and they left the path and disappeared into the scrub.

A first for me during these Botany Bay trips was one of the fiercest battles I have ever seen in nature. I have heard about how spider wasps, Pompilidae, attack spiders and lay their egg inside them, but seeing it in reality was something that I never expected to witness. On one hand it is a terribly vicious way for the spider to die, on the other hand, it can be argued that the spider does not exactly run an insect friendly business and that it is only fair the spider wasp fights back taking out a few of the otherwise superior predators living off its defenseless relatives.

Another first was the sighting of a Red Knot. I had Jarrod along for the Knot spotting - with waders in non-breeding plumage you can always use an extra pair of eyes. It ended up being as difficult as expected and at some stage we were actually a bit afraid that we would not manage to locate this visitor to the reef. Similar to a “Where's Wally” puzzle, we had beehttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifn looking for the usual red-and-white shirt and the distinct facial features of mister Red Knot, just to realize that colors were all wrong – the bird was indeed sporting the most boringly possible non-breading outfit ever seen, and the sneaky bird had decided to take a position with its beak hidden underneath a wing, just to make the game even more challenging.

Well, we got our bird in the end, it is actually quite nice when it takes a bit of effort and the additional quail and spider wasp action were nice bonuses – not to mention that I managed to get out and about in yet another weekend.

Christmas in Denmark - A Snap Freeze Experience

2011-06-19T05:39:00.000-07:00

As always I had my usual summer escape to the cold end of Europa over Christmas - hereby once again highlighting the severe delay this very blog suffers from. In Denmark we statistically get ca. one white Christmas per 10 years i.e. the ground actually being snow covered on the 24th of December. A usual hobby of ours is to follow the various meteorologists publishing the probability of getting a white Christmas all the way through December - 2010 was different, very early on the bookmakers could stop taking bids, everyone knew it was going to be a very very cold white 2010 X-mas.

Danish winters teach you some good lessons in life, a couple worth highlighting here are: Eat well - it helps keeping you cozy and warm, and the other one is to get your lazy carcass outside every time there is just a hint of sunshine, you never know when the sun will be shining again. I have had heaps of joy following both of these rules of life! ;-)

As hinted above, this years winter was indeed something special. A delta T of -50 hits hard when you have slowly started adapting to the Australian temperature of life. A day after having been exposed to a leisurely 35°C in Sydney, I found myself in a very different habitat sporting a temperatures down to -17°C, I managed to capture the thermometer in the car in previously unseen territory of -15°C, you will have to trust me on the additional 2 degrees of frost.

A cold crisp Danish winter day is actually surprisingly good for a solid walk, as long as you keep yourself moving and dress wisely it is pure joy. The wise choice of cloth should include a "system" that keeps your fingers warm and still allow you to press that trigger ... I need to upgrade my equipment in that regard, holding 3 kilo of ice cold metal will make your fingers numb instantly when the mercury is in the minus two digits range.

I managed to squeeze in a bit of ice birding during a visit to a historically early frozen Limfjorden - normally this stretch of inland water in the north of Jutland does rarely freeze solid and of the few times this have happened before in my lifetime, I do not recall it ever happening this early in the year.

Birding during such conditions you have to be careful not to stress the birds, the last thing you want to happen is the birds having to burn precious energy fleeing their position because you pushed in to close trying to get a better shot. They are already stressed by suddenly having lost their natural defense against the usual 4 legged predators - foxes in particular - having access to their now landlocked roosting areas away from the coast.

A snow dressed Danish winter landscape, with high blue sky and crisp air is a pretty beautiful sight - quite lucky, since resent events means that I will probably soon have to spend a bit more time under such conditions.

Royal National Park

2011-06-02T18:02:00.000-07:00

Things have been incredible busy around here during the last few months and once again I have have had a hard time balancing the act of getting out there exploring and the task of getting it all written down and documented. Hopefully this blog post will be the first of a quick series of postings that will bring me nearly up to date ;-) One can only hope.

Some time back I did a few walks with the Amoores in the Royal National Park, here is a little sum up of the highlights. The Australian summer do not invite for big excursions into the wilderness – you simply cannot carry the water needed for big walks, and relying on picking water up along the way is risky business – those small creeks have a nasty tendency of going dry when exposed to hot Australian summer weather.

A national park pass is a great idea, particular if you are doing short one day trips out of Sydney, since all of the parks around the metropolitan area is covered by the little sticker – in particular The Royal National Park down south of Sydney, aka “The Royal”.

The coastal national parks close to Sydney all delivers a great combination of the raw power of the sea mixed with spectacular sandstone cliffs, windblown heath and pockets of bushland. The mix in landscape ensures suitable habitats for a broad variety of wildlife. The Royal National Park is the biggest and arguably the most impressive of them all - not much beats a wander along the roaring sea, seeing how the waves pounds the sandstone cliffs, while White-bellied Sea-Eagles soars above :-)

These trips to the Royal National Park were indeed more for the joy of getting out rather than us targeting specific birds or other wildlife and as always, when you get out of your hobbit hole things starts happening around you and it is not necessarily what you expected to find.

The coastal heath delivered the usual gang of birds. You seriously have to admire how the New Holland Honeyeaters have conquered every single stretch of scrubby coastal heath on the NSW east coast, so much indeed that I have finally stopped taking those NHH photo, where a daring individual sits high, exposed above the scrub, taking looks at those camera slinging travelers passing through his windblown habitat. Instead I concentrated on the fantastic explosion of color, that was added to the otherwise dull scrubby green heath by a larger than normal presence of wildflowers.

I have tried to avoid it for years when it comes to wildflowers, but as with the birds and the other stuff I take photos of it all becomes more interesting when you start naming it. Pretty photos are all good, but if you can add names, then you also get the stories and the insight. So here we go, with great help from the all knowing internet I am willing to risk it and name the wonderfully red and white colored beauty above as Native Fuschia or Fuschia Heath, Epacris longiflora. Easy - even with next to no Latin skills it makes sense to name these elongated flowers "longiflora" i.e. long flowers.
The Rush Fringe Lily, Thysanotus juncifolius, below was actually the reason why I started looking for wildflower names - it is a stunningly beautiful flower and I simply felt that I needed to put the effort in to at least name this little gem. Next time I promise that I will bring the macro lens for some more appropriate close ups. The flower only last one day, but there are probably a couple of neighbors slightly out of sync, if you need more than 24 hours to return.

The strange looking "flower" below is from the Drumsticks & Conesticks family, Proteaceae. Spending some time online I have reached the conclusion that this one is the Narrow-leaf Drumsticks, Isopogon anethifolius.

A tip from a guide book steered us up along a little fresh water creek, through some scrubby bush and suddenly we were at our own private little waterhole, with waterfall, shade and some very confident and photogenic Water Dragons, Physignathus lesueurii.

The level of confidence should be pretty clear from the photo below - if food is on the other side and the way has been blocked by a shoe I will just have to climb the shoe .. and the fact that the shoe was well and truly attached to the leg of a human, that did not try to sit particular still, was of less concern :-) Not even the pregnant member of our little bushwalking gang showed that much lust for food.

A final treat, was the spotting of yet another wildlife species lured in by the power of food. While sitting eating on the sloping rocks bordering the waterhole tiny amounts of food must have dropped into the water, because suddenly a crayfish, Euastacus, emerged from the deep, searching for a meal. It was so eager indeed that strategic placement of crumbs in hard to reach places, nearly lured it out of the water.

Great stuff, once again the Royal delivered! These trips are very much a testimony to the fact that if you get out, you might not always see what you expect, but you will see something exciting.

Bowra Station - Creatures of The Night and Going Home

2011-02-25T22:37:00.000-08:00

My last night at Bowra Station and I was out with the macro lens again. As always it was all happening, the creatures of the night very performing yet another fantastic show. To get an idea, while standing doing my cooking I literally had to be careful not to step on frogs that were busy jumping around trying to find a good spot for their nightly serenade performance.

A welcome abstraction from the frogs was a couple of geckos that had decided to call the shearer's quarters home, I believe they are Tree dtellas, Gehyra variegata. Old wooden buildings in the outback seems to host all kinds of exciting wildlife, the huntsman below had saved itself lots of work by catching dinner early.

The strange looking insect above gave me a bit of trouble, but it is probably a Mole Cricket Gryllotalpa brachyptera. Funny little thing that has the looks of a great digger - which it apparently is! - but it can also swim and fly, my first impression was that it looked a little front-heavy for such exercise, but nature will constantly surprise :-)

If you see frogs there will be snakes! - at least that is a saying I have heard plenty of times down here in Australia. I will say straight away that I did not see any snakes at all, I am sure they were there, but I well and truly missed them .. as it often happens with snakes. I had been slightly surprised when I realized that the campsite was directly up against the local swamp and with the amount of frogs around Bowra, and in particular around my tent, I must admit that I had checked the zip in my tent thoroughly before going to sleep. However, none of the other happy campers had seemed to worry so I did not want to be the "scared foreign tourist" and just adapted to the situation by performing the before mentioned extra check of the zip and my little "clean the boots before putting your feet in them"-routine in the morning. This second evening I had practically forgotten of the chance/risk of meeting a snake when a new Australian visitor arrived. After overlooking the campsite it was pretty clear that the shearer's quarters seemed much safer and I soon found myself in a weird situation trying to explain that "nah, you are unlike to see a snake and why should those snakes try to get into your tent?" and "they would not have placed the campsite here if it wasn't safe" .. arguments that I had used the night before convincing myself that it was all good :-D

After another great sleep, I was treated with the most fantastic sunrise. One of the first birds of the morning was a Major Mitchell's Cockatoo circling the campsite while making sure that no one could be in doubt that dawn was breaking. When the morning sun hits an agitated Major Mitchell's Cockatoo with raised crest, it is a great idea to have your camera ready, since this subdued colored bird becomes one of the most beautiful birds in Australia.

I had to leave Bowra, it was tempting to stick around for another morning, but when it comes to driving I very much like to have good time so that I can allow myself to stops along the way if something looks interesting - and after a little fueling trip to Cunnamulla the day before I was pretty sure that I would be seeing predator birds along those morning outback roads.

Indeed I did! Swarms of grasshoppers being exposed on the bitumen were easy pickings and had lured an excellent selection of large birds to land. Approaching slowly in the Magna seemed to be the best way of getting in close, but every move I made was being monitored and it was not appreciated when I rolled the window down and got the lens out.

I had another great encounter on the way home, approximately 50km south of Cunnamulla 2 Brolgas flew across the road - what a fantastic bird the Brolga is! Unfortunately the Magna had reached cruising speed and being alone in the car I felt it was to much of a job to control the car while shooting photos out the window. Luckily it is one of the birds, I have seen and taken photos of before.

I love driving in the outback, it is heaven compared to sitting in a queue in Sydney using 50 min doing the 18km to work knowing that you will have to spend the same amount of time going home later that day. You set the cruise control and keep an eye out for monitors and Brolgas and otherwise it is all easy ... except when trouble strikes!

There I was looking out for those monitors trying to cross the road when suddenly the road quality rapidly deteriorated. I remember sitting there thinking "this piece of road is pretty bad - they should do something about it". A quick glance in the mirror did however reveal that not only was the road bad, the Magna was belching out smoke from the right hand rear tire ... Time for a wheel change! Apart from spending a bit of time giving the Magna some new rubber, the trip back home went extremely well. I managed to make it all the way home to Coogee and all in all the long weekend escape to Bowra only cost me one extra day off from work - what a fantastic way to use a long weekend - Sitting here writing about it I get a very strong feeling of having to do something like that again.

All good! This is the last Bowra post from my 2010 trip, I will try to hurry and get the blog more up to date, however, generating "new material" for the blog has even higher priority.
Out of more than 2000 photos I have included 130 in my Bowra Station Picasa Album, a large part of them have been used in these Bowra Station blog posts, but feel free to follow the link below to see them all.

Bowra Station

Bowra Station - Another Full Day of Excitement

2011-02-18T06:38:00.000-08:00

Another big day at Bowra and what a day! :-) After a great sleep I crawled out of the tent as the sun started rising and I was greeted by the local Chestnut-crowned Babbler family dancing around my tent looking for food. My plan for the day was pretty similar to what I had been doing the day before, but benefiting from being significantly more rested and alert I expected another cracker of a day exploring the south-western outback of Queensland.

Our little "Bore-drain-walk"-team was once again ready for a wander along the drainage canal and as the day before I was in for some of the most intense and varied birding I have ever experienced in Australia.

Most of the birds from the day before were still around. Spotted Bowerbird was jumping around in the trees and we once again found the White-winged Fairy-wren in its bush - this time it seemed to be much more relaxed with the attention and I managed to get in close and snap a few photos.

A newcomer this early morning was the Snake-necked Turtle Chelodina longicollis above. Notice how the turtle has hidden its long neck and head by folding it horizontally under the front edge of the carapace, all fresh water turtles in Australia (except for the Pig-nosed Turtle) do this, hence called 'side-necked' turtles. This is different from e.g. the American species that will pull their head straight in when threatened. Another feature of this great little creature is that if you pick it up it will "release a pungent fluid" that will keep you reminded of your wrongdoing for at least a few hours :-D .. it wasn't me ;-)

Birdlife was once again absolutely stunning! Woodswallows, Honeyeaters, Friarbirds - just to get an idea, in less than 50 meter we saw 3 type of parrots; Australian Ringneck, Blue Bonnet and Bourke's Parrot. I was very happy to finally get a photo of Bourke's P., I have seen it once before, but did not manage to get the snap-box pointed in the right direction in time. The Blue Bonnet is another bird I have only seen once before - actually I saw both of these great parrots first time during my trip to Mungo National Park Easter 2009, one of the very first blog posts here on Life of Allan.

No Bowerbird without a bower! After our morning stroll, the caretakers at Bowra had promised to show us the bower of the Spotted Bowerbird. Maybe the Satin Bowerbird makes a "nicer" bower by being so selective in its choice of color, but no doubt that the Spotted Bowerbird had put a lot of hard work into decorating its love nest. Apparently it is not the work of a single male bird, but instead a little gang of boys keeping the bower spotless. All the attention attracted one of the owners and I finally managed to get a decent photo of this species.

Another outback specialty that I have seen before, but not been able to capture well is the Red-backed Kingfisher. But it is all easy around the homestead at Bowra, the birds are used to the attention and will happily strut their feathers. My feeling is that it was significantly harder getting close to birds out in the landscape away from the homestead though, out there humans are rare and the birds much more wary.

However, there were still a few of those "wary" birds that I would not mind seeing and as usual if you are after a specific bird you odds of success are significantly increased by going to its habitat. So the Magna and yours truly once again challenged the red dirt tracks of Bowra.

Midday early summer in outback Australia is not prime birding conditions, but as evident from my earlier dragon post it is near perfect conditions for a bit of reptile spotting. Also I spotted some Mulga Ant nests, Polyrhachis macropa. I have always thought that their easily recognizable rim structure was made to protect the nest from flooding after heavy rain, that is probably right, but there might be even more advantages from this feature - like using the funnel to trap moisture during cold night etc. Read here and see a nest significantly larger than the one in my photo here - The quite large difference in size have actually made me wonder if the ants responsible for the nest in my photos are indeed the same species that is capable of making these enormous craters .. any suggestions are as always welcome.

Midday seems to be prime time for getting your predator in flight photos. The Whistling Kite above was as curious as the Square-tailed Kite had been the day before, but as discussed in that post, you do not always get the same quality even though conditions seems identical. The Whistling Kite photos are fair and easily good enough for the resolution of a blog post, but they lack the sharpness I managed to get the day before. Maybe a tiny variation in the light available - a third of a stop - pushed shutter speed just outside of what I could handhold that day(?)

I do not know if it was from having been in the sun for one and a half day or what, but apparently I managed to direct some of my attention towards the ground. Exploring Australia I have often seen the perfect cylindrical holes that tells you that there are spiders under ground. Once and a while you can be lucky to spot an inhabitant sitting deep down in the shadow of the hole, but so far I have never been able to get good photos before the spider retreated out of flash range. The little cute feller above displayed a very different behavior and I was very happy to record a solid series of shots of the spider sitting high in its tunnel observing the shenanigans above.

Again local knowledge proved priceless! We had managed to convince one of the Bowra caretakers to come along for another trip up to the area of the Hall's Babblers. On the way there we were having a little stop looking for the Chestnut-breasted Quail-thrush when suddenly a little blob in the top of a tree ca. 50 meters away was identified as a Pied Honeyeater :-) I have seen the Pied Honeyeater before in Gluepot SA, but I would never have called the scrubby looking PH in the photo above from 50 meters away as being one of the best Australian honeyeaters around - It would have been even better if it had been the Black H. :-)

Another great find was a Brown Falcon on the nest. The larger predators are very careful where they build their nests and it was clear that the mum falcon did not appreciate the attention. We kept our distance, but I was lucky to at least in a few of the photos catch a glimpse of the juvenile offspring taking a look at the world around them.

Another great day at Bowra, the sun was low when we finally made our way up to the escarpment and we managed to find the Hall's Babblers again. The long drive is a small price to pay for the adventures that the outback will deliver - sitting writing this post I cannot help feeling that it will soon be time to leave again :-)

All good - Probably my longest single blog post ever, so thanks for reading along and you can pat yourself on the back for making it all the way. I will try to squeeze the rest of the trip into a final large Bowra post soon'ish so that I can get onto some of the other stuff that have happened "lately" :-)

Bowra Station - Nightly Frog Bonanza

2011-02-05T23:08:00.000-08:00

What a night :-) I had set up camp few meters from the local "swamp" and I did not have to move much to be able to take photos of the inhabitants. As night fell I was surrounded by the chorus of a million frogs and they were all way too busy finding love to care about me running around snapping a few photos.

With the help of the "Frogs of Australia" website and some in-field guidance by Todd Burrows aka WildatHeart78 on Flickr I am pretty certain that the first photo of this blog post is my very first burrowing frog; Ornate Burrowing Frog, Platyplectrum ornatum. Burrowing frogs will as the name suggests burrow themselves underground if conditions above ground somehow are not in their favor, they will reemerge back to the surface when conditions have changed - often after rain. I have heard about this behavior before, and been amazed by the adaptability that makes it possible for these water loving creatures to inhabit some of the driest areas in the world.

Second photo is probably of a Broadpalmed Frog Litoria latopalmata and below here I think it is a Spotted Marsh Frog Limnodynastes tasmaniensis. The Frogs of Australia website has a feature, where you can first select by state and subsequently by region, which leaves you with a list of only 42 species to choose from when zooming in on the Outback and Gulf Country of Queensland - huge help for someone like me new to the wonderful world of identifying frogs :-)

Green Tree Frog Litoria caerulea is easily recognizable (above) and there is a chance that the little feller below is Broad-palmed Frog Litoria latopalmata, but I am not sure about that one. Final frog of the night (last frog photo) could very well be Wrinkled Toadlet Uperoleia rugosa, but as always help and suggestions are very welcome.

When I am sleeping in the bush, I always(!) either keep my boots inside the tent or I make sure I clean them out properly before attaching them to my feet in the morning. Early morning at Bowra I had jackpot :-) A frog had actually decided to spend the night in my boots - guess they were nicely warm and humid - a better fit for a frog than for my poor feet :-D The reason for my little morning ritual is not so much for the frogs, but rather to be sure that spiders and snakes have not taken a liking to my footwear during the night. Notice that the spider in the photo below is carrying spiderlings - probably a Wolf spider.

Bowra Station - Afternoon Birdwatching - Hall's Babbler

2011-01-22T04:50:00.000-08:00

Back at camp and the bird keen caretakers generously offered to help out those of us less well equipped with some 4WD assistance. Aim of the afternoons trip was Hall's Babbler, but as always, when you have a chance of spending some time with experienced birders with local knowledge, you are likely to see much more than you hoped for :-) This lovely afternoon at Bowra I was in excellent company with some lovely people and some seriously good bird eyes!

First rarity of the day was Chestnut-breasted Quail-thrush, another bird where my photos unfortunately does not do it justice. These beauties will dart between cover made up of small bushes or grass and it takes a lot of patience to get in close. I saw Chestnut-breasted Quail-thrush during my trip to Gundabooka National Park, but it is a bird I will happily spend time chasing down everyday and it was good to at least get a few adjoining pixels for the blog.

Next - and the target of our afternoon excursion - was Hall's Babbler. Once again patience and local knowledge was key and after 20 min of searching through the habitat our efforts where rewarded with a little family of Hall's Babblers jumping around not understanding what the fuss was about.

Great bird! I really enjoy seeing babblers in general, they are exciting opportunistic birds and it seems that there is always something going on around them. The sun moves fast in the outback and it was time to head back to the homestead. Walking back to the cars we noticed a clay nest with at least 3 inhabitants. My guess is that it is an Apostlebird nest.

Back at the homestead it was getting dark, under these difficult conditions I surprisingly managed to get a decent photo of a Diamond Dove. All day I had tried, but despite of having all the light you can possibly hope for, I could not get that red eye sharp ... It is obviously a lens problem ;-)

What a day! Full speed from first light and not a dull moment. I was knackered and hungry and was seriously considering just getting some food in my belly and allow myself a monster sleep .. as soon as the darkness fell, the frogs started their nightly serenade and I knew I had to give the macro lens a little workout before giving myself some rest - but that is another story :-)

Bowra Station - Central Bearded and Central Netted Dragons

2011-01-21T04:38:00.000-08:00

As it got warmer and the birds disappeared, the dragons came out! Having grown up in the northern end of Europe I am fascinated by reptiles. They are not at all common in Denmark and hence I count them as exotic creatures. My Australian friends usual smile when I am trying to get photos of skinks here in Sydney and I have been told that I will only be proper "integrated" when I start loving cricket and stop taking photos of lizards .. I am working on the cricket bit! :-) This warm October day in the south western end of Queensland I was in for a real cold blooded treat.

I saw the little Central Netted Dragon, Ctenophorus nuchalis while driving slowly along the main dirt track. It is a fairly small dragon probably not even 25 cm from head to tip of tail, but very beautiful! The little feller sports some great colors and an interesting "netted" pattern on its back, hence the name. The tail is very different to the rest of the animal, being less well camouflaged, maybe to diverge the focus of attacking predators away from the dragons main body by exposing a less vital extremity?

At least the Netted Dragon sports a body color that arguably makes them blend into the landscape, the Central Bearded Dragon Pogona vitticeps in contrast seems to do everything possible to be noticed!

During the warm afternoon they will climb almost everything to get in a position, where they can expose their impressive beard. Mature males will have midnight black coloration on the upper chest and beard as a little extra eye catching feature, probably designed to attract an extra look or two from those fashion-conscious females that probably are the reason for this dangerous(?) behavior.

Somehow those bearded dragons have managed to establish a very healthy population up around Bowra, so they cannot be as easy picking as I envisioned in the previous paragraph. The spines constituting the "beard" along with a generally rugged and spiky appearance makes them look like a tough meal and they are apparently capable of delivering a good solid bite if needed.

A wet outback delivers all the ingredients needed for the food chain. Plant life easily sustain an army of insects that again becomes a smörgåsbord for our dragon friends - easy living! No doubt that it will be a very different experience to visit Bowra in the end of a dry summer - All those "easy living" species will be gone, and left is only the truly desert loving creatures, that have learned to survive the scorching sun assisted by very little water .. A late summer trip might not be a bad idea :-)

Bowra Station - Midday Birding

2011-01-15T22:58:00.001-08:00

Bowra was getting warm, but there were still so much to explore :-) I decided to get in the car and try to get an idea of the accessibility of the different habitats and use a bit of time in the areas where some of my targeted species had previous been know to reside.

First stop, slim chance of: Grey Falcon and Slaty-backed Thornbill - who would not stop! :-) Actually there was no chance of a GF sighting, I had already had a little chat to the caretakers and rain in the desert west of Bowra meant that those areas were still wet enough to sustain a good mouse population, hence the GF would not yet need to move east into Bowra range.
So no Grey Falcon, but I ended up being pretty happy with my stop anyway! While trying to photograph a good mix of LBBs (Little Brown Bird) darting around in the bushes a lovely red-brown shadow suddenly appeared few meters above the scrubby trees, leisurely circling above me was the least worried Square-tailed Kite I have ever encountered.

The hovering Square-tailed Kite gave me some of the best bird-in-flight photos I have ever managed to take. I do not know if it was because of the lack of a morning coffee or that holding onto something solid like the Magna's steering wheel for a day made my hands steadier than usual, but the ca. 50 Square-tailed Kite photos are exceptional sharp - much better than what I managed to do the day after in a similar situation with a Whistling Kite .. Hm, there is a slim chance that my lens alters between having good and bad days, but reality is probably that the bad days originate approximately 15 cm behind the lens mount :-)

Most of the LBBs were probably Chestnut-rumped Thornbill - at least it seems that both of the photos here (above and below) are of the Chestnut-rumped variety. Graeme Chapman's site has some excellent photos and a description of what to look for, and verdict must be that the Magna will have to head west again later in the year to sort out the SbT - not bad at all :-)

Roads around Bowra Stations are fairly good and I could get anywhere in a low 2WD, except for the last part of the road up onto the escarpment where you have to go to see Hall's Babbler. From where the Magna would have to give up it would probably result in a 30 min walk to the babbler territory and an equal 30 min back. Luckily I had sorted a lift later during the day, so I could concentrate on the other areas, next stop was "(cloud) cuckoo land" where I was promised Pallid Cuckoo, had a chance on Black-eared Cuckoo and against the odds, but still possible, was the chance of bagging a Redthroat.

I parked at the main road and decided to shake off some of the driving laziness from the day before by walking up the hill. I had great views of the most fantastically bright red and velvety black male Mistletoebird - unfortunately my lens had decided to start taking shaky pictures ;-) .. or the energy from my breakfast was running out. Up the hill and as promised I got my Pallid Cuckoo. I followed two cuckoos having an argument for nearly 30 min, often they were so concentrated on establishing their territories, that I could move in close and get some decent photos. It would have been lovely if it had actually been between a Black-eared and a Pallid, but both vere of the latter origin and I had to settle with a single tick for the hill. :-)

It was now just after midday and Bowra Station was getting truly hot. The bird action began to take off and I started focusing my intention on some of the other wildlife around. To be continued.

Bowra Station - Morning Bird Walk

2011-01-14T05:22:00.000-08:00

What a great morning! :-) The nightly chorus of the frogs had ceased and instead replaced with an equally impressive mix of weird and wonderful bird calls. In the hot parts of Australia mornings are by far the best time of the day to spot those feathered noise makers and I was out of bed in a flash ready to start exploring.

The south-western end of Queensland is far enough away from the usual habitats around Sydney to give you that feeling of everything being different. Of course there are birds and plants that you can also find around Sydney, but when the doves are diamond, the friarbirds are little and the bellbirds are crested, you know that you are away from home.

During dinner the night before a couple of the caretakers at Bowra had promised to take the newly arrived for a morning walk along the bore drain, a White-winged Fairy-wren had been spotted in a particular bush a little walk away from the homestead, and considering the size of Bowra - and the amount of bushes! - it was an offer too good to refuse to be guided to the right bush :-)

The birding was absolutely fantastic and in the first 500 meters of walking I managed to see four(!) new birds plus I got photos of a few species that I have not managed to digitize before. The early new ones were White-necked Heron, which I for some reason have managed to avoid seeing even though it should be possible to pick it up much closer to Sydney. As hinted earlier, I also managed an encounter with a few Diamond Doves pottering around outside the homestead. Another bird that I had not seen before and that seemed to be attracted to the presence of humans at the homestead was Spotted Bowerbird and finally we got good views of the promised White-winged Fairy-wren, what a great little bird - sadly my photo does not do it justice.

The water at Bowra is artesian water and originates from the Great Artesian Basin an enourmous water source underlying 23% of Australia. It is the largest and deepest known source of artesian water in the world, and absolutely crucial for the sustainability of life in some of the driest parts of outback Australia. All that water had attracted a few birds that I had not expected to see that far outback - Black-winged Stilt, and what about a Nankeen Night Heron in the desert?

Bowra used to be a cattle station, and to maximize the possibility for the cattle to get to water a many kilometer long drainage ditch brings life giving water out onto the property. Birds as well as cattle needs to drink once and a while making the bore drain walk some of the best birding anyone can imagine.

We had a fantastic one and a half hours stroll that morning. Super company and some very special nature - what more can you hope for.?..! As we passed the campsite where I would later pitch my tent, we encountered a family of Chestnut-crowned Babbler. Babblers are great opportunistic birds and have some of the most interesting social behavior I have seen for any bird. The Chestnut-crowned Babbler is a great find, but I had seen it before and it was not the babbler I was after. The bird that has arguably added the most to the fame of Bowra is a constant presence of the rarest Babbler of them all: Hall's Babbler - A bird I would be targeting later that day :-)

A last surprise from our morning walk was a Buff-banded Rail walking around in the tall grass next to the little lake. This bird have never been seen at Bowra Station before and I guess we were all quite proud of having helped making a stunningly impressive bird list swell even a little more :-)

Bowra Station – Prologue – A Rough Beginning!

2011-01-13T02:42:00.000-08:00

Finally I am ready to start posting some of the photos and stories from my Bowra Station trip. This first prologue will deal with the hardship I had to endure making my way to the south western end of Queensland. Being alone in the car, I took very few photos during the trip, instead I will spice up the story with a few of the photos I managed to take after arriving at Bowra Station late evening after a long day behind the wheel.

My trip had a very chaotic beginning, but thanks to some fantastic people at Bowra and the quality of the place itself, it ended up being some of the best days I have spent in Australia – Bowra is a wildlife and photography heaven.

Australian Green Tree Frog Litoria caerulea

My initial plan was to leave Sydney Thursday night after work, make it to Capertee Valley and sleep there, allowing for an early Friday morning start heading up towards Bourke, where I planned to use Friday evening and a bit of Saturday morning in Gundabooka National Park before pushing into Queensland for the main attraction of the trip: Bowra Station.

Some type of Emperor Moth(?), Saturniidae.

I got to Capertee and had a great sleep, but Friday morning before leaving, I wanted a quick photo of the campsite and realized that my camera battery had been drained from being stored upside down in my backpack – My guess is that trying to squeeze as much camera gear into the pack as possible I had placed the camera so that one of the buttons on the back, probably the live-view button, had been continuously activated causing severe battery drain. What to do? I could take a chance and drive further outback and hope to buy a (charged?) battery in a camera store on the way or, since I had managed to get road ready at an impressive 5.15am, I could drive straight back to work, do a full day in the laboratory, head home, charge the battery, pack the charger(!) and start the drive west again early Saturday morning. I choose the latter. Luckily work was very understanding and I could move my day off from Friday to Tuesday, the entire shenanigans only costing me a drive to Capertee Valley and a bit of packing pride :-)

Tiger Moth, Arctiidae, Amata sp.

One of the reasons for including Gundabooka National Park on the agenda was that the place had received a good lot of rain recently, which had brought along the chance of seeing a rare and spectacular display of outback wildflowers, plus the wildlife that comes along. Once again my plans were not to be! I had a great early escape from Sydney Saturday morning and was covering good ground. Next to no traffic and the Magna was firing on all cylinders, I got to Nyngan and had still plenty of photography related podcasts to listen to – great drive! As I approached Cobar I realized that I was in trouble – the skies were dark and the land was wetter than I have ever seen the outback. My fears were confirmed at the petrol station in Cobar, the weather forecast predicted lots of rain over the next few days and the police had put out a warning urging people to stay on the bitumen and avoid dirt roads. I decided to drive north towards Bourke – I would be passing the Gundabooka National Park entrance and could take a look and see how bad it looked. As I left Cobar the rain started bucketing down.

I did not even consider driving into Gundabooka! Between Cobar and Bourke I was literally driving through the rain on a piece of tarmac just slightly raised above the two rivers flowing in the trenches next to the road. There was no way I was taking the Magna off-road! Last time I had been in Gundabooka it had been one of the driest places I have ever visited, this time it was turning into an ocean in front of my eyes.
[Notice that the events I am writing about took place in early October, the rains I am talking about have nothing to do with the present flooding in Queensland.]
Where to sleep? I decided to use a bit of logic! :-) Bowra Station is famous for being incredibly dry – it (nearly) never rains and life is only sustained because of spring water on the property, hence creating the unique habitat attracting the rare wildlife I wanted to see. Here I was ca. 400km south nearly drowning in rain .. I decided to continue north!

Finally I had a bit of luck! As I made my way further north the rain became patchy and after entering Queensland I even had glimpses of a setting sun. Arriving at Cunnamulla it was quickly getting dark, those outback towns look significantly more welcoming during the daytime and after that many kilometers behind the wheel it seemed natural to give the last 16km of dirt road a go. I had an excellent description of the way in and I promised myself to turn around if the road was too wet.

It had hardly rained at Bowra and after 20 min on a dirt road as good as some of the bitumen the Magna had been negotiating earlier during the day I was finally there. After nearly 13 hours of solitude in the Magna I was taken aback by the warmest most fantastic welcome I have even been given during any of my endeavors. Before I knew what was happening, the Bowra Station caretakers had managed to sort me a full plate of dinner, a glass of wine and some fantastic company :-)

As mentioned above, I managed to squeeze in 30 min of photography before going to sleep. I was absolutely hammered, but the sounds of a trillion frogs outside the homestead was simply too tempting and I went for a little walk with the Sigma 150mm macro attached, all of the pictures in this blog post are from that first night at Bowra.

Shane's Park - Birding Western Sydney

2011-01-02T22:14:00.000-08:00

Eremaea had been full of reports about some good birding happening out in Shane's Park - a Western Sydney suburb - A piece of Air Services Land off Captain Cook Drive had delivered rarities good enough to fire up the rest of the birding gang and an early Sunday morning the Magna was heading west for a bit of close-to-home weekend excitement.

It nearly seemed the birds knew that it was going to be a warm day. They were all over the place trying to do all their birdy things in the first few hours of the day, so we benefited well and truly from having an early start to the day. In less than 500m of walking we saw Fan-tailed and Shining Bronze-Cuckoo, the latter being new to me.

Shane's Park might not be the most picturesque part of Australia, but the wildlife was excellent and we had heaps of photo opportunities. The army of caterpillars above was a great sight. When approach they simultaneously started to shake enhancing the illusion of them being one large entity.

Sighting of the day - apart from the Shining Bronze-Cuckoo - was a close encounter with the Eastern Brown Snake above and below. What fantastic creatures snakes are! The very large Brown Snake was lying sunning itself next to a small creek when we spotted it. As if it knew it had been sighted it slowly started moving. As we started jumping around trying to get the best possible photos, the snake decided to quickly get away from all the shenanigans and gave a fantastic display of its swimming credentials speeding across the creek and into the scrub in a matter a seconds. Good stuff!

As the day progressed and it got warmer the heat brought out all kinds of exciting stuff including spiders, skinks and weirdly shaped insects. We still saw birds, including the Eastern Shrike-tit below and a possible White-throated Gerygone which we stalked for nearly half and hour without getting sufficiently good views. But it was as if the birds slowly disappeared possibly the heat played a factor, but also the extensive use of petrol propelled 2 and 4 wheelers on the bush tracks made the place a less relaxing hangout for birds and birders.

All in all a great day in Shane's park! We dipped on a number of the reported species, but good to save a few species for another day :-) If you are considering visiting the area, my best advice is to go early! The midday use of the area as a race track is quite disturbing. Second best advice is to keep an eye on the track in front of you - who knows what will be lurking ;-)

Blue Gum Forest in the Grose Valley - Blue Mountains

2010-12-06T04:05:00.000-08:00

Back in the Blue Mountains! Still taken by the profound in-your-face beauty of the Grose Valley that had hit me during our Mount Banks trip, I had convinced Jarrod to come along for (one of) the steepest track in the Blue Mountains - the descent into the Grose Valley and the Blue Gum Forest from Perrys Lookdown - good to have someone along that can help carrying you up and out if you get tired :-D

Once again weather was on our side and we had stunning views over the valley for most of our descent and, apart from a good healthy(?) burning sensation in the quadriceps and slightly shaky legs due to the muscles working overtime trying to stop us from running wild down the steep track, it was all pretty fantastic :-)

What a difference 656m makes! Vegetation up high on top of the sandstone cliffs is scrubby and dry, but when you get yourself down into the valley where the river flows it is like entering an entirely different world. The blue gums are standing tall and strong, everything is green and lush - full of life.

What a great spot! There was a bit of traffic up and down the track, but as soon as you are down in the valley, the vastness will dilute the hordes of trampers (we saw less than 10 all day) and it is easy to find some serenity. Remember to press the river panorama below to be taken to a high resolution version.

Great walk and quite a bit of a workout, I managed to avoid taking any pictures during the ascent - I had other things to concentrate on .. like breathing and the repetitive exercise of trying to bring the lowest foot up higher than where the front foot was parked. At some point I was even getting slightly grumpy with myself for always having to drag the DSLR along - You do not need 3kg of long tele-lens in a dense gum forest, next time I will bring the primes instead! .. maybe :-)

Such a good feeling, to sit there in the car, heading back home to Sydney in a dry t-shirt (the other was "slightly" damp) with a coffee and a mountain pie in the belly and feeling good about having done something with your weekend - that is all you need to forget about all hassle of dragging your lazy carcass up the hill .. who knows maybe I will even do it again one day.

Coogee - Evening HDR

2010-11-28T00:57:00.001-08:00

A few HDRs from Coogee. I finally have a little more time for photography and writing again and hopefully I will be able to do something about the backlog - it would be sad having to go into an eventful 2011 still trying to deal with 2010.

HDR is pretty perfect for capturing the last sunlight of the day and still keep some details in the shadow Unfortunately I was out at least 20 min late so the sun had already disappeared and I had to battle very slow shutter speeds. However, with a few natural camera supports around - who needs a tripod when there are solid rocks around? - it was possible to get enough light through the lens to call it a photo. Knowing how dark is was towards the end, it is quite impressive how the HDR manages to extract colors from all the darkness.

Cape Banks and Long Bay - Pelagic Excursion

2010-11-13T04:06:00.001-08:00

Last year I was blessed with some seriously good winter storms, nothing better than a cold winter morning with a solid south easterly when you are out trying to get a photo of an albatross or two. This year has been very disappointing when it comes to albatross sightings, it seems I never really got the combination of weekend and strong onshore winds.

Back in the beginning of September, however, a single weekend seemed to be decent i.e. weather so rubbish that the birds would not expect any human being foolish enough to be standings exposed on the cliffs, so there was a chance those pelagic winter visitors would relax and drift close to shore hopefully getting inside Bigma range.

Cape Banks did not deliver any albatrosses this September weekend, but I managed to finally get decent views of a few Hutton's Shearwaters passing by, they were a first for me :-)

Conditions were pretty rough and I decided to retreat. Furthest out on the cliffs around Long Bay an abandoned military observation post gives good shelter when all other options are too extreme and with nothing else on I opted for a few hours out in the "shed".

The shearwaters were flying too far away from the coast to allow for identification, but quite a few terns came in literally flying straight above me and a nice surprise was a juvenile Pacific Gull hanging around. Earlier this year I saw my first ever Pacific Gull in Long Bay, few weeks before seeing hundreds of them down in Wilson's Promontory.

All good - after a day like that you feel proud to have been outside, just make sure to wash some of all that saltwater spray of the camera and it will all be fine :-)

Mount Banks Panoramas

2010-11-12T22:25:00.000-08:00

It is impossible to catch the grand views of the Blue Mountains, but nevertheless I keep on trying :-) I still remember first time I was bushwalking in the Blue Mountains: You are making your way through the bush, noticing that the ground start to slope downwards and you start to see blue sky between the trees in front of you, you push the last few meters out through all the greenness and bang! You are hit by these fantastic views of green forest below, blue sky above and vertical walls of golden sandstone - Not bad at all! :-)

You simply cannot have a bad walk with views like that - great day in the mountains! Mount Banks is definitely worth a visit. Being located 20 min off the Great Western Hwy and hence a safe distance away from most of the crowded Blue Mountains tourist magnets, you are likely to have a hole lot of national park to yourself and your companions, without in any way having to feel that you settled for a sub-prime experience.

All the panoramas have been put together with AutoStitch and have been uploaded to my Picasa album in high resolution (press the photo to be taken to the HR version).

Mount Banks - Stunning Vistas in The Blue Mountains

2010-11-11T02:58:00.000-08:00

Back in Australia and back to the Blue Mountains! I had a few weekends, where I felt that without extra days off work it would be impossible getting anywhere new and exciting - How wrong I was :-) True that a good solid drive will take you into unknown territory, but a couple of hours an early Sunday morning and you will find yourself in the Blue Mountains, where you can equally well get a double shot injection of some breathtaking nature.

Mount Banks or apparently Mount King George was the target of the weekend. Bill and the Amoores were as usual keen for a bit of bush walking and the Blue Mountains delivered one of the best days I have ever had out there. Crystal clear and crisp cold mountain morning air combined with some breathtaking views - what more can you hope for a lazy Sunday morning? :-)

During my very first trip to the Blue Mountains about 5 years ago I was standing at Evans Lookout overlooking the Grose Valley thinking - WOW! - and then "Wonder if you can get to the other side?". I am nearly embarrassed to admit it took 5 years, however, I have done the walk down into the valley and out again a few times and that is significantly harder walks than the Mount Banks hike.

Great day out and a good opportunity of practicing some landscape photography, I will put together some panoramas and post them here soon'ish. The birding highlight of the day was a Chestnut-rumped Heathwren. I managed to spot it, but in my eagerness to get everyone onto this little shy beauty I forgot to take a photo, however, Jarrod managed to get a great shot - see here for yourself.

A Roommate Lost And A New One Found :-)

2010-10-29T04:39:00.000-07:00

I had been a bit afraid of how I would cope with suddenly living alone again. There were obviously quite a few advantages associated with not having a roommate. Like, it would surprise me if the disappearing ice-cream problem would persist and also, my expectations were that it would be significantly easier to negotiate pillow ownership with an opponent less :-)

So there I was with all the pillows and a bucket of ice-cream while feeling slightly lonely, when a movement revealed that a new little visitor had moved in; a freezing tiny lizard was trying to warm in the sun on the cold floor of my sun-room. Reptiles desperately need heat to be able to move and this little fellow looked in trouble, it was so cold that it could barely move and it looked hungry .. and it was not the ice-cream it was after :-)

I quickly arranged a tiny puddle of water and a selection of food crumbs in the sunny windowsill, lifted the cold little lizard up there and got hold of my camera and macro lens. It was incredible easy getting the close-ups of the lizard, it barely moved .. for about 2 min! :-) After that its movements became faster and I decided to observe from a distance.

I somehow had imagined that it would just stand there and let the sun slowly heat its body, instead the lizard immediately flattened itself onto the warm windowsill as soon as I had placed it there to maximize heat transfer. What a smart feller! :-) The crumbs disappeared and the little fellow took off up along the sliding window - great little happening on an otherwise boring August day :-)

Botany Bay National Park - Land of The Southern Emu-wren

2010-10-28T05:26:00.000-07:00

After that I have been traveling, I often end up revisiting many of my old favorite spots close to Sydney. Being slightly beaten up by jetlag, full up of exploring foreign territories and often running out of memory card space ;-) it is very convenient to just go and have a bit of a relax in one of Sydney's not so busy backyard - Botany Bay National Park, specifically the area between Boat Harbour and Cape Solander, qualifies for that.

Apart from delivering some good bushwalking and great vistas, it is a fantastic spot for some lazy birding and it gives the visitor a chance of seeing one of the cutest small birds Sydney has to offer; Southern Emu-wren - Botany Bay was where I saw my first SE-w and it proved to still be the spot. Get a bit away from the coast into the scrubby parts of the heathland, keep the camera ready and listen for high pitched wren chirps and you might get lucky :-) This time I got onto a female SE-w exposing itself to a bit of afternoon sun for about 20 seconds (top photo) not bad at all.

Great blue sky, Cockatoos flying above and some opportunistic plants flowering despite of the calender showing mid winter. Sydney is not to shabby a place to live :-)

It is possible to cover the full stretch from Cape Solander to Boat Harbour and back in a few hours, it is even possible doing it while birding, but depending on the activity of the feathered inhabitants it can take you most of an afternoon. I expected Boat harbour to be fairly quiet mid August, it is just a bit too early for the arrival of all the exotic waders, so I decided to cut the walk short and save some energy for later in the year. It could very well be the right time of year just now to release some of that energy - the internet is full of rumors about good waders around and there is a few of them that I still need to see. :-)

Barren Grounds - Finally I Got My Ground Parrot :-)

2010-10-23T04:59:00.000-07:00

Back in Australia and back to Barren Grounds Nature Reserve. The faithful readers out there will remember that I have been to Barren Grounds at least twice while blogging; the trip with Jarrod where we saw the Jewel Spider and when Gemma and I had a (nearly too) close encounter with a Highlands Copperhead. In total I have probably made the trip south 5 times, so why keep going when you have already seen all that stuff? ;-)

Well, despite of all those visits, I had only seen 1 of the 2 birds Barren Grounds is famous for: Eastern Bristlebird, ca. 2 years ago I was down there and saw half a dozen of them running around in less than 1 hour, but on every single visit I have dipped on the Ground Parrot! Despite of missing 5 times, Barren Ground is still the best spots in the universe to go if you want to see Ground Parrot, Pezoporus wallicus, it is simply just a tricky bird to see.

Finally, the little green-feathered parrot decided to show :-) We had two sightings, firstly a bird in flight which I did not manage to get photos of and ca. 1 hour later, but not to far away from our first sighting, we got views of a bird in high grass ca. 25 meters in front of us on the path, I managed to get a few poor photos of that one, I cannot rule out that it was not the same bird.

Good stuff! Quite happy to finally get decent views of this little secretive gem. Apart from the GP we saw very few bird, it could be because weather was less than impressive. Strong winds, cloudy and so little light, that it nearly felt like evening - maybe that had helped us, since the GP is famous for only showing during early morning and at dusk. Only one other bird qualifies for the blog - Beautiful Firetail above is always a good spot.

Hopefully I will still go to Barren Grounds once and a while, it is great bushwalking down there and after having finally covered most of the birds flying around at the plateau, I can just concentrate more on all the other stuff making it worth getting your lazy bum of the sofa. :-)

Back in Copenhagen - Danish Holiday Coming to An End - Final Post

2010-10-22T03:51:00.000-07:00

The holiday was coming to an end and I was only a good long weekend away from having to board another lovely long-haul for down under. Before that, however, we were going to take full advantage of a long weekend opportunity in Copenhagen.

As I stated in the very first post, Copenhagen knows how to put on a show and if you ask, there is a good possibility of some of the friendly locals taking you for a little tour - particular if you actually know them ;-) We caught up with a(nother) friendly little gang of Larsens, which gave us the tour of Christianshavn where the keen tourist will be able to tick the spire of Church of Our Saviour (Vor Frelsers Kirke) and one of Copenhagen's newest and most popular sights: Noma - the best restaurant in the world!!

Best way to see Copenhagen is from the water! Head down to Nyhavn and jump onto one of the canal tours, that will take you around the harbor and canals for about 30kr ($6). The full tour will take you about 1 hour, and all the boats I have been on have excellent guides that are capable of covering all the stories in a minimum of 3 languages without even breaking a sweat.

Having to sit still in the flight back home to Sydney for a day I convinced my companions to join in on a solid walk up along the harbor front to Langelinie. Great walk with heaps of stuff going on around you. The new Opera House in the photo above is a newcomer, it only finished in 2005. Discussing the architectural quality of the Opera is a favorite topic of many Danes. Expectations were sky high since that combo - Danish architect and Opera House - has quite a fine track record. Sound quality is apparently state of the art, so no matter what people think of the building otherwise, it is probably fair to primarily judge an opera on its capability of producing nice sounds :-)

We reached Amalienborg and dad was on home turf, he is probably the only one I know that has actually been invited over to visit the Queen :-) Another visitor were in town and he had arrived in style - Paul Allen had sailed in on his ship "Octopus", 125m long, 60 crew on board, 2 helicopters and a submarine just to mention a few of the facts about this tinny .. it only just makes top ten on the largest superyacht list, but hopefully Paul does not care about that :-)

The little mermaid was not home at Langelinie this summer - she had made the trip to China - Expo 2010 - to help promoting Danish export, quite a task for an old lady :-) Instead we used a bit of time at the Gefion Fountain, which definitely has the size to impress - strange how it has been absolutely crushed in level of appreciation by a tiny non-water-squirting figurine sitting quietly on a rock :-)

Fantastic stuff! Great holiday! It nearly felt a little sad to leave for Sydney, but very few things in life are irreversible and I will probably do the same trip once and a while in the future. I have created a little Picasa album with all the photos from these Danish-Holiday blog posts and a few bonus ones. Feel free to access them by clicking the link below. :-)

Denmark summer 2010

The Summerhouse - Orchids and Hedgehog - Denmark - Part 6

2010-10-21T03:48:00.000-07:00

The summerhouse has quite a few features that adds to the joy of going back home. It delivers extremely quiet nights (and days), which results in some top quality sleeps - I could cut an hour of my standard sleep and still feel more refreshed than I would after a night next to the bus stop in Coogee :-D ... but why cut when there is no need? ;-) The quality of BBQ equipment is another big plus, and in combo with someone volunteering to steer the machinery and a series of lovely Danish summer evenings, we could in no way complain about our countryside accommodation.

During the last ca. 5 years we have had an orchid growing in an area close to the summerhouse - a wild one that is, we did not plant it and we are not giving it any special treatment - except for a visit once and a while when we are out for a walk. Nevertheless it consistently manages to flower every summer and even deep into the Danish winter you will still be able to spot the dead flower stem standing tall above the snow - if you know where to look.

The little beauty is from the Dactylorhiza family (Gøgeurt), a good guess would be D. purpurella (Purpur Gøgeurt) since the flowers are distinctly more blueish than red, but variation in color is very common and the D. purpurella was indeed for a long time considered just another color variant of D. majalis. All orchids in Denmark are protected and all of them are in trouble - extensive use of the land, drainage, use of fertilizer etc. have made these fantastic flowers rare, which spurs the next level of treats - "collectors" removing them from their natural habitat and placing them in their gardens, where they slowly deteriorate and die do to badly matching soil composition not providing them with their needs. In reality I do not think many are "stolen" from nature, the big culprit is the loss of idle land being allowed to just be there without human intervention.

As if it was planned we managed to convince one of the most lovable dusk loving Danish mammals to perform a little show for our international visitor. Despite of the spike look, no one can help falling for the hedgehog (pindsvin). Indeed Little G. took charge of the camera and managed to immortalize the little feller below.

Great stuff! The holiday was slowly coming to an end and it was time to leave Jutland. Before getting airborne, however, there would be a couple of days in Copenhagen - probably a good idea, since Sydney can be a bit intimidating when you arrive straight from the dark end of Jutland :-D

Klosterheden - Denmark - Part 5

2010-10-19T05:05:00.000-07:00

Back to another favorite spot - Klosterheden, where we had seen the White-throated dipper (Vandstær) last winter. Once again absolute fantastic to see everything green and bursting with life when your last memory of the place was quiet and covered with a layer of snow.

Naively - or should I just say optimistically - we had talked ourselves into believing that there was a chance of seeing beaver(s), as evident from the wood work in the pictures above we definitely saw signs of beaver activity, but there was not even a shadow of the bark eating semi-aquatic rodent to be seen. A chat to one of the park officers revealed that the chance of seeing our target creature by waltzing through the forest ca. midday middle of summer was next to non-existing. These creatures are exceptionally shy and nocturnal - a combination that often makes a creature a really difficult (and good) tick, like most of the shy nocturnal mammals and birds in Australia :-)

Birds were good, but again getting the photos was really hard. A dense green danish summer forest does not give you many chances of catching anything through the foliage. Finally I managed to get a BIF shot of a Common Buzzard, only fair since they are as common in Jutland as Common Myna in Coogee. Years of abuse from humans have, however, made them extremely wary and your best chance is to either approach them in a car or be lucky to catch one flying towards you.

Klosterheden was teaming with Roe Deer, during our winter walk we had seen glimpses of a couple, but this summer day we good great views of something like half a dozen including a little deer family.

All good, nothing wrong with a good solid walk in the forest and dipping on the beavers just mean that there will have to be another wander in the Klosterheden next time I am under those distant skies.

Birding Vejlerne - Denmark - Part 4

2010-10-17T21:15:00.000-07:00

One of the good things about a little country is that you are close to everything :-) I have previously claimed that Balling was located less than 10km from one of the best bird spots in Denmark, however, getting in the car and driving for about an hour will take you to what is probably the best birding area of all of Denmark and arguable one of the best places in Europe for birdwatching: Vejlerne or The Vejler.

During the middle of the 19th century the kingdom of Denmark lost a few wars, it hurts your pride to loose, but even worse loosing a war or two often involved the loss of land i.e. your production of bacon and milk goes down the drain. So what to do? - lets drain all the lakes and wetlands and make them into prime farm land! .. luckily it was harder than expected and in a few cases the projects were abandoned - like in the case of vejlerne - resulting in some of the best bird habitat around.

Located in the north end of Jutland, Vejlerne becomes an absolute crucial pit-stop opportunity for the army of European birds migration between the warm south and the cold north, who would not like to take a little breather and stock up on food before having to make the journey across the water.

The Danish birding community must be very well organized, the hides are absolutely top-notch quality! Good seating options, windows that can be opened just enough to get a clear view with your scope, but still keep the wind out (not something you think about in Australia, but it surely make sense in colder climate) and very appropriate the hides have thatched roofs making them blend into the reed forest surrounding them. The level of equipment for use was another welcome surprise, in most of the hides there were binoculars for anyone to use - but a free-to-use roof mounted (and spring suspended) monster binocular allowing you to get good focus on every single bird between Sweden and England must be the Nirvana-model of fully equipped bird hides - Fantastic stuff!! :-)

Birds were good, really good - but it was hard to get proper close. I managed to get a good BIF of a Marsh Harrier (Rørhøg) on the hunt around one of the bird hides. 5th photo is a BIF of a Northern Lapwing (Vibe). It is a bird that used to be very common in DK, but sightings are now down to about 25% of what it they were 35 years ago. Just below the Lapwing is a familiar sight - or nearly - the Eurasian Oystercatcher (Strandskade) looks very much like the Australian Pied O. equivalent. Highlight of the day - bird wise that is - was to see Eurasian Crane (Traner)! With the help of the roof mounted binoculars we all managed to get good views of a few of these fantastic birds. Pretty impressive, since they were probably about 1km away - unfortunately well and truly outside of Bigma range .. maybe I should cool the need for a wide-angle lens and start buying and stacking teleconverters with the Bigma! ;-)

Great day in the reeds! Judged from the smiles in the photo above I was not the only one enjoying myself ;-) Lovely place, definitely somewhere I would like to go again. Funny that the hardest part of this blog post was probably to find the Danish names for some of the birds :-) .. and I must admit that I still think Oystercatcher is a better name than Strandskade :-D

Denmark - Part 3 - Spøttrup Borg

2010-10-16T23:44:00.000-07:00

Having brought international visitors to your hometown, you always want to give them some of the best sightseeing the region can deliver, so we headed of to the local castle: Spøttrup Castle (Spøttrup Borg).

Spøttrup is Denmarks best preserved medieval castle. It has been standing tall for more than 500 years, some of them in honor and glory and quite a few where it was badly neglected. Middle of last century the Danish government took over the caretaker role i.e. they started paying the bills, and an extensive restoration was initiated to bring Spøttrup back to former glory.

Walking around inside the castle a Danish summer day you realize that the place was not built for comfort, you barely manage to feel the warmth of the sun and can just imagine how freezing cold it will be to visit outside of the summer months. The meter thick walls are built for war; they will stop a canon ball, but at the same time they will create a heat sink so efficient that it will take the wood from a small forest to keep the place heated during winter.

When built Spøttrup was a formidable stronghold. Before taking on the actual castle any attackers would have to negotiate two moats with an internal bank while coping with whatever the fortified soldiers could throw at them.
The little extension on the wall in the photo above is one of the so called "hemmeligheder" (secrets) that the castle sports .. absolute state of the art in toilet plumbing back in the day .. just boil the water from the inner moat before drinking :-D

The place is full of small details, one of the clever designed features of a castle like Spøttrup is that all winding staircases are spiraling clock wise up, so that a right handed swordsman defending the castle against intruders will have an advantage swinging his weapon - Good thinking! :-)

All good! It has been a few years, since last time I visited Spøttrup so very nice to see it all again. Having a visitor along is a great way to reacquaint yourself with all the good stuff you saw when you were a kid - bringing your camera along is a fantastic way to see it all from a new angle. ;-)

Denmark - Part 2 - Garden Macro Photography

2010-10-16T01:52:00.001-07:00

What a difference 6 month makes :-) The picture above is from our usual walk around Balling - take a look here to see how all that greenness was white last winter when we did one of our danish winter bushwalks.

Nature truly puts on a show during the summer months back home in Denmark! Long sunny days and water galore keeps the plants happy and flowering, which attracts an incredible variety of insects, which again supply birds and other wildlife with a good protein source. The shortness of summer makes it feel like all that life is buzzing around at turbo speed - having to sort out all the tasks of an entire life in a matter of a few summer months.

Bird are wary back home, it is much harder getting good bird photos in DK than down here in Australia. Birds will take off early when you try to sneak in on them and deep dark thick foliage makes it nearly impossible to pick birds hiding in trees and bushes. However, lots of other stuff is happening just outside the door, so armed with my macro lens I used quite a few hours in the garden.

Bumblebees, hornets and insects with half body-length tails - Good stuff! :-) The long tailed insect is a female Pimplinae indet. and I can reveal that the "tail" is not used for stinging! Indeed it is an elongated ovipositor used by the female to lay its egg in hard to reach places. I must admit that I never really used the time to intensely study and learn to name all the small stuff that lived around me when I grew up in DK, but boy it is truly a magnificent world to look into - I finally see the idea in having a garden .. and a macro lens to look at it through ;-)

Apart from fulfilling your wildest dreams as a macro "studio" a Danish summer garden also doubles as an excellent location for your food consumption needs. Danes are very good at maximizing the time outside in the daylight during summer, it is like fueling the body with energy before the arrival of the darkness of winter. Only the transmission of (important?) sports events on the television can lure the Danish back into their dark burrows :-D

Denmark - Summer Holiday - Part 1 - Copenhagen

2010-10-15T02:52:00.001-07:00

Back in Denmark for two weeks of summer goodness! :-) Finally, after 5 years I managed to squeeze in a midyear holiday back home. It has actually been slightly unfair for the reputation of Danish weather, that I, during the last 5 years, have exclusively been observing the shortest, darkest and coldest days DK can produce - Chrismas is super cozy, but summer is easy to like :-)

Arriving in Copenhagen (København) early Friday, we took advantage of not being needed anywhere before later that day and managed to use half a day in Copenhagen running around pretending(?) to be tourists and catch up with one of the (nearly) locals - aka Jens - who took us out for a bit of birding and a coffee.

The impact factor of Copenhagen tourism is pretty world class! An hour or two pottering around in the old part of town will give you most of the essential CPH ticks. Round Tower (Rundetårn) - top photo - was build for astronomical observatory back in the day when nights were dark, today it works as a tourist vantage point where from excursions can be planned or hard-to-find hotels can be rediscovered :-) The bloke riding his horse aka the equestrian statue above is Archbishop Absalon who has been credited as the founder of Copenhagen .. an honor that is probably associated with the fact that back in the day the history books were written by the church for the church - archeological diggings have proven that the township where Absalon build his castle was already pretty well developed before he came riding in :-)

Amalienborg is where the Queen lives and the best spot to get photos of a "garder" a soldier from Royal Life Guards, who possesses exceptional skills in the art of standing still with way to warm headgear on. Just behind Amalienborg is the Marble Church (Marmor Kirken) which is worth a closer look - someone with a fast wide-angle lens could get away with some fantastic shots from there ... and if you have a bit of cash or a not so risk-avert financial adviser you should consider the apartments in this pretty old-fashion but very nice neighborhood :-)
Before heading of to Jutland (Jylland), we finished of with the sweetest little castle imaginable! Located in the center of Copenhagen is Rosenborg Castle (Rosenborg Slot), another subject that makes me consider investing in something wider than a 50mm and with a great garden surrounding it and attracting summer hungry Danes out for a few rays of summer sun, we fitted in just fine.

Barrington Tops National Park - HDR and Panoramas

2010-10-12T03:33:00.000-07:00

With no birds around we had ample time for all kinds of other photography, including the challenge of trying to capture the beauty of the vistas that are associated with a mountainous environment. HDR does a good job at that! Some time back I used a bit of blog space to describing the process of using HDR and Tone Mapping to capture the details in the bright as well as in the dark parts of a photo, it all got a bit confusing. A few photos are worth many words: Above is a HDR + tone mapped photo combined from 5 raw images and below is a single jpg shot of the same view.

The jpg is doing a fair job at trying to preserve details in the dark front of the photo, but at the cost of badly overexposing the sky in the distance. In the HDR image details are contributed from all 5 photos allowing good resolutions in the dark as well as the bright parts. I might actually prefer the horizontal version of the view.

I also managed to shoot a few panoramas. Autostitch still works a treat and as long as the old CPU does not have too much to chew on and that I do not ask for too high a resolution it spits out panos as fast as I can generate blog posts to put them in. :-)

There is obviously the possibility of combining HDR and stitching - making tone mapped panoramas! - That will have to be another day, but there is absolutely nothing difficult about it, just a matter of shooting a hold flock of raw images and then remember what goes where. :-)

All good! Great escape to Barrington Tops National Park. We entered the park from the western side, but decided to leave going east. It is safe to say that we saw more birds during the ca. 40 min drive out of the park than we had seen during the 3 days up on the plateau. The eastern part also called Gloucester Tops National Park seemed very much alive and vibrant and I could be convinced to go there for a long weekend at some stage if someone is up for a bit of camping and an attempt at seeing a scrub-bird.

Barrington Tops National Park - Alpine Winter Camping in Australia

2010-10-12T02:27:00.000-07:00

Barrington Tops National Park is in some ways quite similar to Lamington National Park, both sport high altitude rain forest with all the goodness that included .. such as Antarctic beach trees and Rufous Scrub-birds. Despite the calender revealing that Australia was just about hitting mid winter we decided to go high altitude winter camping for a bit of cold - but cozy - Queen's Birthday long weekend camping.

Lets be honest; the nights up in Barrington Tops were proper cold - we were solidly under 0°C during the nights - and the birding was pretty shabby, apart from a close encounter with 3 Wedge-tailed Eagles feeding on a dead kangaroo next to the road as we were driving in, we saw very few bird - and non of them were Rufous or Scrub.

Not having to focus our attention on the birds, we could concentrate on the landscapes, the walking and the task of trying to stay warm. It is not often that I have seen Australia this cold and quiet, it did indeed remind me of Christmas in Denmark.

But as always, when you get your lazy carcass of the sofa and get out there in the wild stuff happens - the big surprise of the weekend was an encounter with a herd of wild brumbies! I have seen wild horses up in Kakadu before, but that at a boringly safe distance of more than 100 meters across a broad river system. That encounter can in no way be compared to the joy of suddenly standing face to face with a small herd of properly wild ones :-) Fantastic to see how the leader of the pack - the large black stallion - took control as soon as they realized that they were not alone, it stood tall staring us down while allowing the rest of the herd to slowly wander off making sure that we did not follow. Great healthy strong animals - what a great sight!

Back at camp we got into survival mode - lots of cloths, hot food and hot beverages. As evident from the picture above, little G. was proud as a peacock after getting her new fuel stove firing, not even my poor choice of using kerosene - the most smelly sooty type of fuel possible (except maybe for diesel) - could remove the smile from her face :-)

The first night taught us that a bonfire was worth the effort, so out we went for firewood - needless to say that we did not exclusively go for the dry-dry selection - indeed I think the smoke from the start up of our little bonfire could be seen back home in Sydney :-D

Lamington National Park - The Final Days of A Great Holiday

2010-09-25T06:56:00.000-07:00

I have raved about the benefits of having a terrace literally reaching into the rain forest, as you can see in the photo above I am not far from the truth, our O'Reilly's accommodation was indeed pretty well placed for someone that likes their trees.

We kept going to the early morning O'Reilly's Bird Tour and we kept being stunned by the trust those small feathered guys showed the bird guides. One of the days we had more of a walk around in the area and managed to spot another (slimmer) Thrush, another Green Catbird and 6 Topknot Pigeon in flight - the Topknots were new to me. :-)

We also kept pushing those tired legs ours, all in all we probably covered 50km over the long weekend, with the brunt of the distance covered over two good long full day hikes into the forest, 22 and 18km.

Those long walks are truly rewarding! If you are there purely for the birds you are probably better off staying close around O'Reilly's, where you can see nearly all the birds of Lamington except maybe for the Rufous Scrub-bird, but for everything else - including the exercise - you do really well by exploring further into the wild. The tiny Praying Mantis in the photo above was so well camouflaged that I nearly deleted the photo first time I went through the set.

Logrunners are great birds, they just scramble around in the very darkest part of the forest floor, often close to (but not on) the path. Therefore they become a quite easy tick, but it is very difficult getting good photos - some artificial lighting increases your success rate significantly though.

The final tick of the weekend was added after the sighting of a Noisy Pitta! I have been after that one for a while, up at Kingfisher Park in far north Queensland we used nearly 45 minutes stalking one calling from the bush, but we never got eyesight of the little colorful gem. This time in Lamington, the loud call once again alerted us and half of our little group managed to see the noise-maker before it took off. Seeing pictures of Pittas in a bird book gives you the impression that they are nearly unnaturally colorful and will be easy picking for any predators, but when they are hiding in the deep darkness of their rain forest habitat they still manages to blend in pretty well.

All good! - This will be the last Lamington post for this time :-) What a great spot - I will definitely try to go there again another time, and having proven (to myself) that it is in range of the Magna, one could even anticipate it happening more frequently in the future :-)

Lamington National Park - Creatures of The Night

2010-09-24T22:12:00.001-07:00

Another stunning sunset and we were getting ready for a well deserved rest. A long day in the boots followed by an excellent dinner - there was no doubt that we could fall asleep .. if it had not been for all the excitement going on outside the apartment.

An army of moths and other insects were lured onto the rain forest terrace by the shine from the lights inside the apartment. Having had the macro lens on the camera most of the day using it as a fast semi-tele lens it was only appropriate to finally get it a bit of proper close-up action.

I (nearly) always try to name at least a few of the critters that make it all the way to a blog post - lets just be honest - it is a tough one this time :-) However, as always you realize how fantastic the internet truly is and a bit of looking around reveals that Australian moths apparently have a good solid fan base out there in cyberspace :-) The beautiful white and black spotted creature above could very well be from the Ethmiidae family - Ethmia clytodoxa maybe?

All good! Great finish to an eventful day. I have made a little Picasa album for those of you who consider starting a career in moth identification. Any help naming these critters is very welcome.

Lamington NP 2010 Insects

Tramping Lamington National Park - 22km of Pure Rain forest Excitement

2010-09-24T04:17:00.001-07:00

Lamington National Park is sufficiently different to justify the drive, somehow it just manages to be that little bit more exotic than the familiar bush around Sydney - guess it is just the usual grass is always greener syndrome :-) But the selection of mushrooms is quite astonishing, the Antarctic Beech looks like something taken out of Tolkien and the Lyrebirds are Albert's.

After the morning bird tour and a massive breakfast we began the journey of the day - the plan was to give those lazy legs a good solid shock the first day by pushing 22km. I convinced myself that the logic of the exercise was to clock up as many kilometers as possible while fresh and fool(??) the body into thinking that only doing 18km the day after would be like a day off :-) .. I do not know if the rest of the party tried to apply any logic, watching them take off it actually looked like they just loved walking :-D

Lamington is the sort of national park that makes you want to know more about plants. The birds are pretty fantastic, but you do not have to walk much in the forest before you realize that this place is full of plants you have never seen before. Indeed there are quite a few species endemic to Lamington i.e. this is the only(!) spot in the universe where they grow! 5000 Year old Antarctic beech, 100 species of ferns and orchids galore, including the Lamington Underground Orchid, Rhizanthella omissa, one out of only four plants known to mankind to live its entire life underground! - We did not see that one though .. ;-)

Photographically Lamington is a challenge! I had once again opted for the macro which worked formidably well while being in the darkness of the forest. But I can safely say that it is slightly difficult to capture the grand views you get when the path veers close to the edge of the plateau and gives you first class tickets to a screening of NSW down below.

We were walking at good speed, but still managed to see a few good birds. I managed to see a Green Catbird minutes after we started, that was new to me :-). The logrunners were everywhere and we used a few minuets trying to track down an Albert's Lyrebird calling from a hillside covert in thick scrub - those Lyrebirds are hard to see, and after a while we gave up and march on, happily knowing that our defeat meant that I would have to revisit another day :-) During the last few kilometers of the day, we spotted another exciting bird - A Thrush! Lamington is inhabited by both the Bassian Ground Thrush and the Russet-tailed Thrush, two very similar birds. I had a look on the internet where a few sites try to help with the ID of these two species including Graeme Chapman's site and Tim Dolby's, but I am still a bit on the fence about identification, luckily I managed to get a few very respectable photos, so hopefully a few of my readers can chip in with some ID help(?) - Thanks in advance :-)

Lamington National Park - Morning Bird Tour at O'Reilly's

2010-09-14T06:57:00.000-07:00

Early morning just after sunrise O'Reilly's arranges a ca. 1 hour bird tour around the estate. It has become a many year old tradition to take guest around meeting some of the feathered inhabitants of the area and as always with animals it simply has to be on every single day to nurture the relationship that has been established between guides and birds. The tour is simply a must for all visitors, it is amazing to see how a few raisins, a bit of cheese(?..!) and years of patience have loosened the usual apprehension birds have towards us humans.

Before the tour really began, we could celebrate the first highlight of the day - a female Regent Bowerbird decided to perch itself in an exceptional photogenic position right outside the O'Reilly's reception - That was a new one for me :-)

After a quick walk around the grassy areas close to the complex and a visit to a Satin Bowerbird bower we dived into the rain forest where a little army of birds were ready to welcome us. I have seen Wonga Pigeon being very undisturbed by the presence of humans before, but Eastern Whipbird is notoriously difficult to get good photos of and here it was jumping around few meters from our feet - "Mister Whippy" was apparently in a great morning mood :-)

As always it is great value being taken around by one of the locals, we were taught how to spot "hidden" hanging bird nests and we saw the hollow tree where the Nightjar was spotted last time - unfortunately it looked like the Nightjar had left the spot - and a flood of tree and plant related knowledge was flowing freely after a couple of inquisitive horticultural questions were asked by a certain tree loving WA gentleman that had joined the birding excursion.

Great stuff and a fantastic opportunity of getting some excellent close-ups of some great birds. Anticipating the darkness of the early morning rain forest I had luckily chosen the fast macro (Sigma 150mm f/2.8) and could continue shooting it quite wide open and with assistance from the on-board flash, as I had done up in far north Queensland. In manual mode with an aperture of f/4.0 and a shutter speed of 1/160s I could control exposure by flash output compensation alone.

Great stuff! I am pretty happy about some of the Eastern Yellow Robin shots - it was a particular photogenic participant. The Yellow-throated Scrubwren is a bird that I do not see everyday, so nice with a close encounter. A Lewin's Honeyeater came along for the shenanigans, but there was no doubt that it was the bowerbirds that were stars of the morning - Great to finally see a Regent Bowerbird - we only saw females during the morning walk, but we managed to spot a male later during the day down at our "rain forest"-terrace - and a male Satin Bowerbird is always a treat.

Lamington National Park - Evening Photography From The Terrace

2010-09-12T15:30:00.000-07:00

Being restricted to the terrace while the sun was setting behind the mountains was not to bad at all. Having all the camera gear there and good time I managed to experiment a bit.

I am always impressed by the performance of the Autostitch Panrama Tool that I link to in the "Software you can't live without .. and that is free" down to the right of this site. It is really free and it just works incredible well. Set your camera to aperture priority and choose something like f/13 for landscape, see what shutter speed the camera gives you in the center of your wanted panorama. Then set the camera to manual control and dial in f/13 and the shutter speed your camera gave you before. It might sound slightly complicated, but by locking in the same exposure for all the pictures you avoid changes in brightness across the final panorama. The program works on jpg files and handles everything itself - the only thing you have to adjust is what quality you want. Choose "Edit" and "Options" and then I prefer to use the "Scale (%)" setting at either 50 or 100% - but if there are a lot of pictures being stitched and your computer is memory weak, then 25 and even 10% will do just fine.

HDR is equally simple and just as exciting as making panoramas. At the moment I do not have a link to a free HDR software, I will see what can be done about that. Quite simply you take a set of photos of the same scene at different exposures (RAW images preferred). The software will then combine all the information of the photos and selectively let the photo with the most information in a certain region be the main contributor to that part of the final photo. In the photo above the most overexposed photo is probably the only one that was able to catch the details and greenness of the bush in the lower part, whereas only the most underexposed photo would have had the colors of the bright sky. It might all sound very complicated, but as for the panorama tool, it is super easy using the software and if you manage to hold the camera fairly still while shooting your photos, the software will take care of the rest.

Lamington National Park - Road Trip Into Queensland

2010-09-12T03:33:00.000-07:00

We got an offer that we simply could not reject - a long weekend in Lamington National Park at O'Reilly's; good food, fantastic walks, great birds and exceptional company - yes, I really like my tent, the cous-cous camping dinners and even the solitude, but once and a while it is nice to be spoiled and "yes" cous-cous is great for camping, but to be honest my admiration of this tight packing carbohydrate is not so much due to its gourmet qualities - I would survive a weekend without! ;-)

Lamington National Park is located just north of the Queensland-New South Wales border. Knowing that we would have the luxury of running water et al. all of the weekend, it seemed appropriate to rough it a bit getting there - Driving the Magna is obviously always a joy, but 12 hours seems to be the point where even a good thing becomes slightly tiresome. To optimize our time up north, we left Sydney Wednesday afternoon straight after work and by bringing the tent and a bit of gear, we managing to bite the trip into two. There is a good selection of campsites close to the highway, so we pushed on until around 9pm, used about 30 min to get to a campsite and managed to clock up a healthy 8 hours of sleep before we hit the road again.

After all that driving I cannot help getting a bit jittery, luckily check-in at O'Reilly's went pretty smoothly and my companion agreed upon a quick 30 min dash into the rain forest. It was great using the legs a bit after the long drive and it did not take long before we had seen Yellow-throated Scrubwren and zoomed in on a little Logrunner family doing some excavation on the forest floor. Luckily I had brought the charger for the camera this time, because those rain forest are indeed very dark and can take a lot of flash. It was getting proper dark and we retreated to what should prove to be one of the best wildlife spotting locations of the weekend - the terrace of our rented apartment.

Pademelons in the field down below - at least until the arrival of a hungry looking dingo - bird darting around in the rain forest trees, that had conveniently been places centimeters away from the boundary of the terrace. As night fell the rest of our weekend companions arrived, just in time to see the influx of the nightly creatures of the forest - lured in by the light, an army of the most fantastic insects arrived and I was very happy, that I had brought the macro lens. The weekend had hardly started and it was already looking exceptionally exciting :-)

Sydney Olympic Park - Above And Below The Surface

2010-09-02T18:02:00.000-07:00

Back in Sydney and we celebrated by going for a wander in Sydney Olympic Park with the boys - keen binocular slinging long time bloggers Iain and Jarrod. What a lovely way to spend a Sunday, we managed to clock up a good amount of kilometers while spotting wildlife, snapping photos and solving most of the troubles of the world.

Sydney Olympic Park always delivers - maybe not anything breathtakingly exotic - it is still in Sydney after all :-) but a good selection of fish, birds and insects, what more can you hope for? Also, as I argued in the latest Perth post, wildlife in parks is very photogenic, if you are after good wildlife close-up photos you are better off going to a busy park than into the wild.

Good stuff! Excellent company and a great day out, back to the car at the sneaky free car park at Triangular Pond - No Lewin's Rail this time around, but only little G. needed that one, so who cares? ;-)
Those of you who are still wondering what creature I caught in the first photo can see a half-"full body shot" of this underwater Juggernaut patrolling the waters of Sydney Olympic Park - I will suggest using tight tight speedos if you should want to go for a swim :-D

Final Perth Post - A Farewell With A Walk And A Sunset

2010-09-02T02:37:00.000-07:00

The sneaky long weekend escape to Perth was coming to an end, what a great holiday! Before getting airborne our fast walking hosts invited us onto another great walk along the river.

The target of our march was Tranby House, Peninsula Farm, a historic farm cottage established by the Hardey family, who had departed England and arriving in the little township of Perth 1830 to start a new life. The house was named after the ship - the Tranby - that had brought them halfway around the world. It seems the lure of water views existed even in those days or floods were more severe(?), the Hardey family had to rebuild their farm twice loosing the first two attempts to the river. The 3rd house finished in 1839 and is the one still standing there today.

Wildlife along the river included many of the expected water loving species. The constant flow of people along the river and a natural boundary between the path and the wetter habitat has over time taught the feathered inhabitants that they can safely continue doing their birding things without needing to take notice of the human shenanigans going on just few meters further ashore.

Surrounded by cyclists, runners, walkers and screaming kids I managed to get my closest close-up ever of a Egret, the photo above is taken at a puny 230mm not even using half of the zooming powers of the Bigma :-D

A welcome change to a typical Sydney walk was that the usual army of New Holland Honeyeaters were replaced with White-cheeked Honeyeaters instead, a great bird that is not super common in the Eastern states. Despite of having multiple specimens darting around I did not manage to lure one out into the light, so you will have to do with the shadow shot below.

What a absolutely fantastic holiday! :-D Perth and surroundings had really delivered and sitting in the plane trying to clock up a few hours of sleep before having to go to work the only worry was "how am I ever going to get all this onto the blog" ;-).

The Waters Around Rottnest Island - Snorkeling Little Salmon Bay

2010-08-27T06:23:00.000-07:00

Little Salmon Bay is such a fantastic little gem hidden on the south side of Rottnest Island. The beach is tiny, which might be the reason for the relative modest number of visitors you will encounter when you go there. You are quite well protected at the beach with rock structures surrounding the sandy beach and extending out into the water creating a little lagoon. As you have probably already guessed, it is not the sand that is the reason why you go to Little Salmon Bay, but rather the water, or more specifically what is under the water!

Little Salmon Bay delivers some of the easiest and best snorkeling I have done in Australia. A shallow sandy entry into crystal clear water and you have a bathtub the size of a cricket ground full of fish, corals and rich water. As long as you stay inside the lagoon you will be well protected by the rocky structures and maximum dept is not much more than 5m, with 80% of the area at less than 3 meters.

Rottnest should geographically be too far south to support corals and many of the exotic fish we saw. However, similar to how the Gulf stream warms western Europe, the Leeuwin current brings down warm tropical water from the north keeping winter water temperatures at Rottnest significantly higher than what you can expect just 18km east at the mainland, typically 19°C versus 15°C. Along with the warm water comes a variety of tropical marine larvae of which the pink corals have established a foothold in Little Salmon Bay.

Lots of exciting fish! I think the one above is a Yellow Moon Wrasse and the little green fish below is Pretty Polly Dotalabrus aurantiacus, it was pure luck that I managed to spot it in the middle of some green algae. Afterwards it was very easy getting the photo, since the PP was so confident in its camouflage that it did not flee when I came in for a closer look. We also saw numerous Western King Wrasse - there should be a photo in the Picasa album.

Great stuff! Every time I visit Perth and Rottnest I use a bit of time standing in Sydney looking at my suitcase considering if it is really worth bringing snorkel, mask and flippers - it is quite an extra load to transport 4200km west and on your back while biking around the island, however, as soon as you get your head under the surface you know it is all worth the extra hassle! :-) Driving back towards the ferry we managed to get another quick little dip around The Basin before heading back towards Perth.

Rottnest Island - The Non-Feathered Land Critters

2010-08-26T02:38:00.000-07:00

There is a good selection of land based non-feathered critters on Rottnest. The Quokka is probably the most famous inhabitant being directly responsible for the naming of the island. Dutch captain Willem de Vlamingh thought the quokkas looked like rats - I guess you did not need any biology degree to be put in charge of a flotilla in those days .. probably not today either(?) - Well, Vlamingh named the island "Rattenest" which is Dutch for "rat's nest" and over the years the name transformed into Rottnest.

The selection of reptiles on Rottnest is good, more importantly though is that your chance of seeing reptiles is excellent! The lack of dogs, cats and foxes and probably the fact that there is next to no traffic on the island has made the crawling inhabitants feel very safe. Particular in the afternoon they will happily present themselves out in the open, trying to suck the last bit of heat out of the tarmac road. So choosing to do a afternoon ride on your bike around the island can be most rewarding. Do not drive to close to the edge of the road and bring your camera :-)

Once again we managed to spot the local Bobtail subspecies called Tiliqua rugosa konowi, which is endemic to Rottnest Island. Also King's Skink Egernia kingii is a sure spot, I have never pulled out the lunch box at Cape Vlamingh (West End) without a specimen showing immediately afterwards :-)

We did not see any snakes this time around, but a great surprise was a line of Processionary Caterpillar, Ochrogaster lunifer, making their way across the road. Great way to prove that size matters :-) obviously they try to imitate a larger creature by forming a gap-less line, similar to how starlings seek protection in large flocks, "sort sol" and how striped catfish forms dense schools.

Excellent weather, some food heavy backpacks and time off - what more can you hope for? Out at Cape Vlamingh we were treated not only with the views of the Osprey family, but also with some hair raising performance by a couple of surfers in combo with helpers on two jet skis.

I have always though that it was cheating having a friend on a jet ski setting you up for the wave, but watching the battle against those waves at West End, I must admit that there was nothing looking like cheating there! Underwater reefs, massive surf and razor sharp rocks all along the coast - if it was me, I would have like a support vessel or two as well :-D

Birding Rottnest Island

2010-08-21T22:52:00.000-07:00

As usual, a Perth trip (nearly) always include a trip across the water out to Rottnest Island and in similar consistent fashion it never disappoint. Well to be absolutely honest, I would have been happy to finally bag a Rock Parrot, but following the usual logic it would be sad to deplete such a nice area and bring into question the need to visit it again. ;-)

I have seen Common Pheasant (top photo) in Australia before - at least 3 times - but every sighting have been brief and on Rottnest, this time I managed to get a photo which qualified for the blog. This introduced bird has, very much like the Mute Swan in Northam, only managed to establish a foothold in a few select places - all of them islands.

Another old Rottnest friend is the White-fronted Chat. Last time I managed to get a less than impressive photo of a WFT darting across the path, this time we were truly in for a treat with a little family of not less than 10 feeding at the salt lakes in the middle of the island.

The salt lakes are normally a fantastic bird spot, but this time - end of April - there was very little to see, apart from the White-fronted Chats we only managed to see a couple of other waders; Red-necked Avocet and Red-capped Plover above.

Guess there is a season for everything, no Banded Stilts at the salt lakes this time, but instead we were treated with a little Osprey family living in one of the gigantic nests placed on reefs just of the coast. Every year there are 2 to 4 Osprey families nesting around Rottnest, instead of starting from scratch they will reuse one of the up to 70 year old nest "towers" which through generations have grown to abnormal size. Those of you that know the size of an Osprey - 50 to 65cm - will be able to judge the magnitude of the construction in the photo above.

All good! Rottnest was firing on all cylinders. No new ticks, unless one of my tern-knowledgeable readers can create a bit of excitement by naming the tern in the picture below, I would not mind if someone told me that it was a Common Tern race hirundo? But if someone insist on it being a young-but-not-juvenile Antarctic Tern, then it would be very exciting! ;-) These were the bird, but I will return shortly with a underwater and probably a miscellaneous report.

Wungong Gorge and Bungendore Park - Place of Gum Blossom

2010-08-11T03:17:00.000-07:00

Next and last destination of the day was Wungong Gorge and Bungendore Park just south-east of Armadale. The park supports large areas of Jarrah-Marri woodlands, including some good quality old growth which supply a varied selection of parrots with vital nesting holes.

The Jarrah trees have in an immensely impressive way adapted to the conditions of the southern end of WA. With a root system reaching down as much as 40 meters they are capably of surviving through the toughest of droughts and in the case of a devastating bush fire, the trees will be able to regrow from a underground lignotuber similar to how Mallee and Banksia survive the burning inferno. The quality of the wood has put great pressure on the Jarrah in WA, huge areas of old growth forest have been logged. Its success(?) as a building material being fueled by inbuilt termite- and rot-resistant, but application range from road fill to musical instruments.

The Jarrah and the similar but taller (and rarer) Karri are inhabitants that the tree-knowledgeable people of the region are very proud of and rightly so - get a WA tree-lover (not to be confused with tree-hugger) talking about the quality of these giants and you will be entertained for hours ;-)

Such specific habitat obviously support very specific wildlife, including some sought after Western Australian endemics - actually nearly all of the ones you can hope to find in the south! So no surprise that we found ourselves in the woods a warm warm WA day. We had taken advice from Frank O'Conner's site, it is an excellent resource for those who would like some suggestions on where to go birding in WA. His Wungong Gorge & Bungendore Park section points out that best time for a visit is early morning. Unfortunately that had not been an option for us, which we bird-wise was probably punished for. However, nothing wrong with a walk in some great forest :-)

Well you cannot really complain when you get the chance to stand and observe a group of Red-tailed Black-Cockatoo foraging the trees around you. I manged to get decent pictures of one of the females - the sex can be determined by the presence of yellow barring on the chest, the male is more deep black and has no yellow stripes. The other birds of this blog post are: Australian Ringneck, Western Wattlebird and a rubbish picture of a Varied Sittella.

I had really hoped for a Rufous Treecreaper and a Red-capped Parrot, but the good thing about dipping badly is that you have the best excuse ever for going again :-) Also, when you got the camera along, there is always something exciting around. I managed to do a bit of pseudo-macro shooting with the Bigma. The Wanderer Butterfly below always makes a good picture, by some it is considered the most beautiful insect in the world. It is another immigrant - not native to Australia, it only arrived in 1871, in north America it is called the Monarch. With those bright colorful wings it should not be a surprise that it is poisonous, it can actually be quite bad eating for even large birds. Weirdly enough it seems that a couple of true Aussie tough guys; Pied Currawong and Black-faced Cuckoo-shrike have (developed?) a stomach that can handle the poison - maybe the lesson being that if you survive years of Australian cuisine you can take on most of what mother nature throws at you :-D

Twitching Mute Swan in Northam

2010-08-09T03:48:00.000-07:00

Well, when you find yourself standing there in the middle of Northam at the Avon River with the camera drawn and little G. running around with binoculars it is very very hard not to admit that you are actually on a proper twitch. I am not talking about a muscles uncontrollable contraction and relaxation, but rather about the journey a keen birdwatchers initiate to see a specific (rare) bird - a twitch.

That specific bird in Northam is the Mute Swan. It is the only place in Australia were you can be sure to see this species breeding in a "wild" environment. Mute (or White) Swans were brought to WA in 1896 by the British, probably to ease some severe cases of homesickness .. A Russian settler and the Major of Northam decided that Northam, with the Avon river going through would be perfect for the swans and the swans agreed - somehow the Mute Swan never really established a proper foothold anywhere in Australia and the imported animals died without giving giving life to new offspring, except for Northam where today a thriving group of ca. 80 individuals patrol the waters.

Quite funny to see a road sign giving direction to where the bird you are after resides :-D No doubt that the swans are a very popular inhabitants and that they are well looked after - in a wild way ;-)

Having once again fulfilled our goals during the very first few minuets at the location, we easily had time for a stroll along the Avon River and a walk across the suspension bridge. It is a beautiful quiet area up there ca. 100km inland and my guess is that Northam sports some seriously hot summer days. We were there end of April more specifically on ANZAC day and lets just say that it was toasty! - Sorry for being terribly behind with this blog, but I am trying!

All good, I managed to catch a few flying object with the camera; some metallic ones in honor of ANZAC day and a more conventional feathered Yellow-billed Spoonbill. Half the day was gone and the next target should prove to be a lot harder - we were heading for Rufous Treecreeper habitat.

Short-billed Black-Cockatoos in The Hills East of Perth

2010-08-08T04:50:00.000-07:00

Short-billed (White-tailed) Black-Cockatoo aka Carnaby's Black-Cockatoo is one of the endemic birds of Western Australia. It is not as difficult to find as its very similar Long-billed cousin (aka Baudin's Black-Cockatoo) and every time I have seen them, there has been a good size flock of them. This early morning in the hills east of Perth I was particular lucky spotting in total more than 50 cockatoos foraging the tree tops in small groups, giving very little attention to the shutter pressing, big smiling Dane running around down on the ground - What a great bird!

Conditions were absolutely fantastic, cold crisp morning air and since the birds did not mind me, I was free to walk around under the trees getting the best angle for the photos. Great start to a big day.

It is a peaceful place up in the hills away from all the shenanigans of the city, so peaceful that even the birds are more relaxed. I have seen Common Bronzewing many times, but usually I find them very difficult to approach without scaring them away. The male above, however, allowed me in close - who is watching who?

I have to include a kangaroo once and a while - at least for my international readers :-D and to remind myself of how different it is down under. I have lived down here for nearly 5 years and once and a while it is good to remember some of the things that stunned you when you arrived. I can reveal that Moreton bay fig and Australian White Ibis are on the list for a fresh off the plane Dane walking the Sydney parks.

After some excellent birding I decided to change to the macro lens and take a closer look. I am quite happy with the insect in flight shot above - if just the bee had turned around! ;-)

All good, great morning - temperature had started rising and it was looking like another warm day in WA, we were heading further inland for one of the most quirky ticks around: Mute Swan in Northam.

Perth WA - Birding Herdsman Lake and Lake Monger

2010-08-06T23:40:00.000-07:00

Back in Perth and back to Herdsman Lake - a great oasis of nature in the middle of Perth and a top top bird spot! I have always had some good luck at Herdsman Lake, during my last visit I managed to get a great shot of a Blue-billed Duck and a sighting of a Tiger Snake. This time the target was Musk Duck.

The first photo of this blog will already have reveled that the Musk Duck hunt was successful - At least for those of the readers that are familiar with this quite distinct looking duck. We literally saw the Musk Duck seconds after having stepped out of the car. The males large black lobe of skin hanging under the beak was visible all the way from the car park. I acquired focus and snapped a few, battling some harsh light and a concerned bird that quite clearly understood that it was being center of attention.

Having already accomplished our goals, we decided to transform the trip into a gently workout and set out for a stroll along the lake. Still having the camera handy, I managed to get a few shots of a couple of old friends: A couple of Australian Shelducks - the female has the white stripe at the base of the beak and a white ring around the eye, and a Laughing Turtle-dove, which is not native to Australia, but was introduced in 1898 in Perth. According to my bird book you have to make your way to WA to spot that one, but it is not on the WA endemic list .. guess a few made it across the Nullabor?

We even managed to spot a fox! Guess it should not come as a surprise with the abundance of feathered wildlife an opportunistic fox would obviously consider it an all-you-can-eat smörgåsbord.

Lake Monger is less protected than Herdsman Lake, most of the birds will be on the water and harder to get close to. It is a good walk around it and we managed to build up some appetite while getting decent looks of Pink-eared Duck, Australasian Shovelers and a feeding Yellow-billed Spoonbill.

Perth WA - Another Sneaky Long Weekend Escape

2010-07-28T02:11:00.001-07:00

Back in Perth WA! The land of good walks, great nature and fantastic food :-) When first you get into the sneaky long weekend mood it is hard not to be tempted by the possibility of spending a long weekend around Perth in the western end of Australia. Only just having arrived back from far north Queensland we were off again, managing to clock up 5 days around Perth for the price of only 2 days of annual leave - that is a truly good value investment!

We took advantage of some family relations and managed to get ourselves signed up for a good solid walk. Aiming for Point Walter we were brought through some of the more picturesque parts of Perth. The fast walking and fast talking locals guides managed to tell an amazing collection of Perth stories while keeping a speed that made yours truly happy that I should just concentrate on listening. Maybe all the driving up in far north Queensland had made me lazy?

It all got very exciting at Point Walter! Despite of a high tide we decided to explore the sand spit reaching out into the river. Boots off and into the wild :-) What a great addition to the trip, being the first party to cross the water and get onto the sandy spit after the high tide, meant that we had excellent views of a good collection of WA waders and seabirds.

The bird above was a bit of excitement. First impression was that it had a shape and size similar to a Pacific Golden Plover, but nothing golden about it at all - rather grey instead. So if anyone out there can confirm that it looks like a Grey Plover, I will be very happy :-) There should be another photo in the Picasa album.

Funny how it is always the exciting bird that is shy? Black swan, Pied Oystercatcher and even Red-capped Plover were happily posing in front of the lens. Good stuff, the sand spit at Point walter is definitely worth a trip. My guess is that best time for a visit is just around high tide when the majority of the spit is isolated by the rising water.

The area along the river is in general a quite nice place! :-) You do not get the feeling of having all those other Perthians - 1,659,000 - crowding around you. Good place for watching a bit of real estate as well, unfortunately others seem to have taken an interest, so a water views will cost you $$$ ;-) Nothing beats a good walk - except maybe a good walk follow by good food. As is evident from the picture below we had nothing to complain about - a cauldron of deliciousness and we were fueled with energy for the days to come.

Cairns Escape - Final Chapter

2010-07-23T20:02:00.000-07:00

Finally, I can bring this endless stream of delayed far north Queensland blog post to an end. It has taken way to much time, but I most admit that I have truly had a lot of joy going through the pictures again. Great holiday with lots of highlights and a few things we would probably change for our next trip, here is a little sum up of goods and bads.

Weather and timing could probably have been optimized. Early April is just considered end of the rainy season and you should know that sometimes the weather does not respect this rule. However, all the rain probably meant that we encountered less Easter shenanigans. We could always find accommodation, no problem booking a car and no queuing to see the Cassowary :-) Price wise, the plane tickets were Easter-price i.e. expensive, however, a bit of looking around and there are always airfare deals out there. Biggest economical setback was probably the need for a solid roof above our heads every night. Despite of having brought the tent, we simply could not use it due to the amount of water pouring down. In most of the exotic locations that meant prices well above $100 a night, In Cairns motels can easily be found around $60 per night.

Birding up north was absolutely fantastic! Tactically we followed the Pareto principle - litterally we split the 5 day holiday into 5 events (i.e. 20%); Daintree, Julatten, Atherton tablelands, South of Cairns, and the Great Barrier Reef. We used 20% of the time each place to see 80% of what the place had to offer :-) Due to this tactic little G. managed to clock up an impressive 57 new bird species:

1. Southern Cassowary
2. Orange-footed Scrubfowl
3. Plumed Whistling-Duck
4. Wandering Whistling-Duck
5. Brown Booby
6. Intermediate Egret
7. Cattle Egret
8. Great-billed Heron
9. Striated Heron
10. Black Bittern
11. Brahminy Kite
12. (Spotted Harrier)
13. Little Curlew
14. Great Knot
15. Grey-tailed Tattler
16. Terek Sandpiper
17. Common Sandpiper
18. Bush Stone-curlew
19. Lesser Sand Plover
20. Little Tern
21. Common Noddy
22. Black Noddy
23. Pied Imperial-Pigeon
24. Wompoo Fruit-Dove
25. Emerald Dove
26. Double-eyed Fig-Parrot
27. Gould’s Bronze-Cuckoo
28. Channel-billed Cuckoo
29. (Barn Owl)
30. White-rumped Swiftlet
31. Azure Kingfisher
32. Buff-breasted Paradise-Kingfisher
33. Forest Kingfisher
34. Blue-winged Kookaburra
35. Large-billed Scrubwren
36. Mountain Thornbill
37. Helmeted Friarbird
38. Macleay’s Honeyeater
39. Yellow-spotted Honeyeater
40. Graceful Honeyeater
41. Varied Honeyeater
42. Yellow Honeyeater
43. Mistletoebird
44. Yellow-bellied Sunbird
45. Chowchilla
46. Grey-headed Robin
47. Pale-yellow Robin
48. Little Shrike-thrush
49. Bower’s Shrike-thrush
50. Spectacled Monarch
51. Shining Flycatcher
52. Spangled Drongo
53. Varied Triller
54. Olive-backed Oriole
55. Figbird
56. White-breasted Woodswallow
57. Torresian Crow
58. Crimson Finch
59. Metallic Starling

I know there are 59 on the list, she had already seen the Barn Owl before (but it sort of deserve to be mentioned) and unfortunately she was very concentrated driving the little Toyota up a steep winding road when the Spotted Harrier took of next to us .. so it was only me that got a good look .. how sad! ;-)
No doubt that Julatten and Atherton tableland supplied most of the birding action, but I really would have been sad not to go south of Cairns to see the Cassowary or to take another day in the hinterland, but missing out on the reef. Cairns Esplanade deserves a mentioning, we used very little time there, probably less than 2 hours in total, but per minute no place delivered more new birds - an absolute must see for any binocular slinging birder.

Great Barrier Reef is a must go as well! No way around it - you have to dedicate at least a day for the reef, apart from some world class snorkeling it is a good way to get a bit out of town and to see something else .. including a few pelagic species, like two types of Noddys and a Booby. Tons of fish and good visibility, what more can you hope for? The snorkeling equipment supplied were excellent and with good flippers we both managed to do a bit of free diving, just to feel alive :-)

Good stuff, still dark and Jetstar brought us back to Sydney, I managed to arrive at work nearly normal morning time, still smelling of saltwater and full of energy.

The Great Barrier Reef - Fish and Corals Galore

2010-07-07T05:52:00.000-07:00

The Great Barrier Reef is full of action! It is all happening around you, fish and corals galore and nearly all of it is easily visible while floating around in the surface, since probably 95% of all the shenanigans are happening in the top 2 meters - where the energy of the sun can be utilized.

The denseness of life is simply breathtaking and at first it is all confusing, new fish darting around between each other, but after a while you realize that despite of all the different colors and shapes, you are dealing with a select few families of fish species. One of the points I have made here on the blog before is that, certain species will be attracted to certain habitats. Despite of the greatness the reef, we only visited one type of habitat! - No doubt that the great barrier reef contains an immense diversity of life and many types of habitats, however, it is also "great" and I guess the time it would take to sail to a significantly different area could just not be justified during a single day trip.

Well, nearly identical dive sites or not, it was still pretty good snorkeling :-) As usual I feel that I have to give you faithful readers a few names of what we saw: The large colorful reef inhabitant in the first picture is of the Parrotfish family - instead of teeth, it has beak-like plates, which allows it to simple bite chunks of the reef and pulverize each mouthful. The parrot fish can then swallow the sandy mixture and digest algae and corals while it is transferred through stomach and intestines.

Above, a species from one of the most popular saltwater fish families around; clownfish aka anemonefish. A certain Pixar movie might have been involved in getting the message across, but seeing a little family of these guys darting around their home-anemone is probably the cutest underwater experience I have had. Best guess is that this little group is Amphiprion melanopus, my fish book call them Black Anemonefish, but it looks like the internet likes; Cinnamon clownfish, Fire clownfish, or Red and black anemonefish.

Another darling of the reef, Six-banded Angelfish Pomacanthus sexstriatus, above. Great colors, fantastic fluorescent blue on the tail and easy to approach without scaring it away.

We also managed to meet an old friend, a Moorish Idol (below), which is one of the most exotic species that can be found around Sydney. Last time I saw one was a year ago in Clovelly Pool just north of Coogee :-)

Another easily identifiable species is the Blue and Gold Angelfish, Centropyge bicolor below. The beautiful colors of this little gem has made it a popular addition to saltwater reef aquariums. Weird to be taken to the various aquarium sites when doing a google search on something you have seen swimming around in the wild.

Good stuff! Great snorkeling and lots of pictures. The little Olympus was given a serious workout and there was not a single available electron left in the battery when the second dive was over. But what a great little camera it is, and how good is it not to have to fool around with a clumsy, expensive and buoyant(!) underwater housing.

I have uploaded a select few (60) photos from our underwater adventure at the Great Barrier Reef to a Picasa album, you can access the album by pressing the picture below.

Great Barrier Reef

The Great Barrier Reef - Hallelujah! :-)

2010-07-06T03:14:00.000-07:00

After many years of snorkeling here in Australia, I finally made it to the Great Barrier Reef - the most famous diving and snorkeling destination in Australia - if not in the world?..! Not bad at all! :-) There is really no way around going to the reef while being in Cairns, every single street down town Cairns will have a good collection of (dive) shops advertising the possibility of taking you out to the reef on more or less anything that can float. From super fast luxury ships that will do the trip out to the reef so fast that you will hardly have time to get your stinger suit on and find a matching pair of flippers, to equally expensive wooden sailboats that will make the travel a part of the experience.

We went for the cost efficient compromise, about $100 per person (including $15 reef tax). That gave us medium travel speed, the trip took about 1h30m each way - excellent opportunity to see a few new pelagic species - and snorkeling at two destinations on Moore Reef. In between dives the trip even included a decent attempt of serving up lunch, all in all clocking up nearly a full day at the reef.

Finally we managed to have a bit of luck with the weather, it was not raining! Apparently we were also lucky with the amount of wind and surf, chatting a bit to some of the more experienced looking members of our fellow participants revealed that we had chosen the best day of the week for going to the reef. The last 3 days in particular had been quite rough, apparently culminating in nearly 100% of participants from the trip the day before having to "feed the fish" .. we quickly decided to buy the motion Sickness tablets.

The Great Barrier Reef is indeed quite "great" i.e. big, so when the ship stopped and it was announced that we had reach our first destination, I could not help having a funny feeling of is this really it? Yeah, well you could see a few boats in the distance, but otherwise there was nothing except water and eagerly gazing into the water revealed non of all the excitement that had given the reefs its reputation.

Before getting into the water we had to sit through a briefing with the captain of the ship, his first question surprised me a bit, but the reaction was even more confusing. He asked, "is there anyone that cannot swim?" and a couple of fellow snorkelers raised their hands!!..??

Such is the attractive powers of the Great Barrier Reef! Even tourists without swimming capabilities will volunteer, even pay money, to be ferried 1h30m away from the safety of solid land and be dumped into 20-30m deep water to see "the largest structure in the world to have been built by living creatures". Fantastic stuff and I take my hat off for those who decided that they needed a float, it takes a lot of courage to swim in deep waters, even for experienced (pool-)swimmers.

Getting into the water it all started to make sense. We were given direction to an underwater Atoll a good stone throw away from the ship. While swimming there there was nothing to see, but as we got closer you suddenly saw this enormous structure rise from deep below, a large nearly perfectly cylindrical reef probably 50m diameter with the top at a perfect 1m below the surface - perfect for just floating around in the surface looking at the thousands of fish darting around between the corals.

To be continued ..

Birding South of Cairns - Cassowary at Etty Bay

2010-07-03T22:39:00.000-07:00

After a night in one of Cairns cheapest motels we were on the road again. Having spend time north and west of Cairns it was now time to head south. We had found a(nother) favorite folder "Bird Trails Tropical Queensland", which gives advice on where to go and what to see between Mission beach in the south and Cape Tribulation in the north. there is also a web page with more information here.

The plan was once again to push as hard as possible in an attempt to see it all :-) Eubenangee Swamp National Park, Etty Bay and Mission Beach were on the list. It had rained most of the night and we were driving into a were wet north Queensland countryside! As we approached our first stop for the day, Eubenangee Swamp National Park, it became clear that all that water would give us more trouble than just the usual wet camera gear and moist socks. After negotiating the first road flooding in the little Toyota we gave up at the second one, after I had reached above knee high water levels on my bare footed walkthrough - I most have walked nearly 1 kilometer in water that day.

We decided to eat a bit of lunch while enjoy to be being back on land and little G. managed to narrow the gap once again by spotting a Crimson Finch in the sugarcane - I had seen it in Ubirr during my Kakadu trip. Great little bird!
Etty Bay is famous for Southern Cassowary and Beach Stone-curlew, so obviously we were going to give it a go! Cassowarys like tropical rainforest, however, the denseness of the forest up north makes it nearly impossible to see anything that bothers to hide, so the chance of seeing this astonishing bird is often better on an open beach with fruiting trees - like around Etty Bay.

What a fantastic creature! You cannot avoid getting hit with a feeling of awe when a Cassowary majestically passes by and in the back of your head, the stories about how this bird with its blade-like claws are capable of killing humans and dogs if it feels threatened, starts to spin ... :-)

We arrived at Mission Beach and weather had turned absolutely terrible! The few seconds I had the lens upright to take the picture of the White-bellied Sea-Eagle resulted in multiple stains on the front element. Instead of exploring the beach, we voted for cover in the rain forest.

We did the Bicton Hill walk in the Clump Mountain National Park. Photographically it was near worst conditions ever, everything was wet and the rain forest was very dark. However, nearing the end of the trip I had caught up on the battery situation and dared again to let the flash fire. When everything else is impossible, you can always do a bit of macro :-)

We managed to see a Buff-breasted Paradise Kingfisher and probably our only Chowchilla of the trip so decent outcome, but towards the end I must admit it was not exactly fun having been rained upon all day and we were happy to make it to the car and begin our return to Cairns. We had booked a snorkel trip to the Great Barrier Reef for our last full day - at least we were supposed to be wet while doing that! :-D

Atherton Tablelands - Part 3 - The Crater and Lake Eacham

2010-06-06T04:32:00.000-07:00

The day was disappearing fast and our visit to the Atherton Tablelands was soon to end. Deciding to only use one day in this fantastic area was hard and it was truly tempting to stick around, but other places were on the list. If we had gone exclusively for the birds we would probably have taken a day more or two, Atherton Tablelands boast a bird list claiming an impressive 327 species of which 12 are local endemics i.e. those 12 species can only(!) be seen while scouting through the tablelands.

Before leaving we had a final few great spots to visit: Firstly we would visit The Crater in Mount Hypipamee National Park and secondly, Lake Eacham - one of the two lakes constituting the Crater Lakes National Park.

The Crater is an impressive volcanic formation called a volcanic pipe - I am no expert, but the internet comes in handy :-) - pressure from gasses generated at the molten lava rock underground have at some point become so large that they literally ripped the granite bed rock above apart, forming a chimney where trough the volcano could vent. The hole is nearly perfectly cylindrical with a diameter of 61m and a dept of more than 140m, the lower ca. 80 meter of the crater has over time been filled with water forming quite an impressive pool - could be a good spot for practicing your free-diving skills(?) ;-)

A small but good walk, a couple of minuets at the crater and an equal amount of time spend at the Dinner Falls and we were of to Lake Eacham. Both Lake Eacham and Lake Barrine in the Crater lakes National Park are old burned out volcanoes that after having been filled with water have created a couple of unique tableland lakes. Arriving at Lake Eacham we were quite birded out - the intense hunt for new feathered sightings had taken its toll and quite frankly we did not really care much about the bird count anymore :-D

Instead of trying to follow every little twitter we decided to do a good solid 4km walk around the lake. We had a lovely walk lots of chatting and very few pictures - not bad at all. A couple of resident water dragons [update; Great Boyd's forest dragons - credit to Jarrod] managed to display so impressively though that I could not resist charging the flash and getting a couple of photos.

A trip like our 5 day escape to far north Queensland generates an enormous amount of brochures readily available from tourist information offices, guides and motels etc. They often end up piled in the bottom of the car making it impossible to find the one you want. Of all the glossy paperwork we received, this folder was the most helpful finding our birding ways in the highlands - so if you are going north then why not bring an electronic copy - I bet someone out there will argue that a certain recent Apple product could prove helpful in such situations :-D

Looks like I will have to hope for the Helmeted Guineafowl becoming tick'able one day ;-)

Atherton Tablelands - Part 2 - Wongabel State Forest

2010-06-01T03:04:00.000-07:00

Wongabel State Forest was next on our list. The Mabi forest include a 2.6km botanical walk where a total of 192(!!) species of trees are named. A habitat sporting such an enormous variety of plants should be a great place for all kinds of exciting birds(?) and a quick search on the internet reveals that Wongabel State Forest should indeed be the home to great birds including quite a few that I had not seen before, who would not like to spot a Tooth-billed Bowerbird, Victoria’s Riflebird, Spotted Catbird and maybe a Yellow-breasted Boatbill - the rumor even suggested that little G. could pick up a Rufous Owl if she was lucky.

Well, if luck is measured by the above listed birds, we had absolutely non of it! None of those famous residents decided to show - we saw quite a few LBBs (little brown birds) and of all the pictures taking during our trip, the set taking in Wongabel has by far been the most difficult to go through and do the identification.

Another setback was my battery situation, which made it impossible to follow my new found technique for getting usable pictures in dark rain forests - letting that flash rip in combo with the 150mm macro nearly wide open.

The walk was not exactly demanding, only 2.6km and exceptional flat. The entire exercise felt like walking through a humongous botanical garden with absolutely fantastic dense forest. We probably spend 2 hours so we can truly claim to have given a large part of the signs a read.

Birding was incredible difficult! Lots of stuff was happening, but getting a good look or, even harder, a photo of the small birds darting around in the dense undergrowth was truly stressful. After two hours of chasing LBBs around I must admit I was happy to get out in the open again.

I still got a few "mystery birds" from Wongabel - including the two below, please feel free to chip in :-)

Finally outside we dived into another serve of exotic fruit. If you ever find yourself driving around in the Atherton Tablelands I would recommend doing some regular stops at the farm sales along the road, there are some seriously good fruit and vegetable deals to be made; 6 avocados for $1 .. that beats the local supermarket here in Sydney! Just before leaving we managed to spot a few Chestnut-breasted Mannikins feeding along the road side - good to be out of the dark forest.

Atherton Tablelands - Part 1 - Hastie's Swamp National Park - Nyleta Wetlands

2010-05-27T03:21:00.000-07:00

On the road again :-) We were aiming at covering as much of the Ahterton tableland as possible and following the same argument as I used for our Daintree National Park excursion, you could argue that the rain made it all easier - There was no way we could bring the little Toyota up the wet and muddy dirt road to Mount Lewis .. guess the Golden Bowerbird and the Blue-faced Parrot-Finch will have to wait for our next visit then ;-) Cutting out the mountain gave us more time down around Atherton and we managed to visit: Hastie's Swamp, Wongabel State Forest, Mount Hypipamee National Park and Lake Eacham in the Crater Lakes National Park.

Hastie's Swamp National Park aka Nyleta Wetlands probably had one of the best bird hides I have ever visited and with a bird list clocking up 220 species it was a bit of a surprise that I should find the best spot in the bathroom sink! :-D

Just as we arrived it started to drizzle, which is not exactly what you want when hunting for waterbirds. It definitely put a damper on the action and I dipped badly on the expected Cotton Pygmy-goose. My lovely companion on the other hand happily ticked both Plumed Whistling-Duck and Wandering Whistling-Duck. Quite a few swifts were flying around and they did not all look like the "usual" White-rumped Swiftlet that we had seen up around the Daintree. However, I did not manage to get sufficient photographic evidence to make a qualified stab at what it was.

All good, we had a little lunch at the bird hide and decided to push on to the neighboring Wongabel State Forest.

Kingfisher Park - Morning Birding

2010-05-26T01:33:00.000-07:00

It is enormously stressful being on holiday, but so very rewarding! :-D Getting up early next morning realizing that we would have to leave Kingfisher Park before lunchtime, we made sure to take 100% advantage of the time we had.

Sitting on the porch scoffing my breakfast while ticking an Emerald Dove passing by, was a fantastic start to the day - guess it was anticipating that some of all that muesli would not hit the spot at the excessive speed I was eating at. Little G. managed to outscore me with about 100%, also having to pull out the pen for a very curious Blue-faced Honeyeater.

After breakfast, we got the boots on and started our last round of the property. Bird-wise the equivalent of letting two kids run wild in a candy store! :-) Absolutely fantastic stuff, new birds everywhere - you nearly got dizzy spinning around trying to follow that unknown bird flying pass or looking after what bush that weird call came from. Spectacled Monarch above and Pale-yellow Robin (race nana) below.

Both little Shrike-thrush and Bower's Shrike-thrush were running around and Yellow Honeyeater decided to show. While all of this were going on I realized that I was in trouble - all the flash shooting the night before and what I had done in the Daintree rain forest had eaten away 60% of my battery life, there was still 3 days left .. and I had left my charger home in Sydney! I simply had to reduce the use of the flash, which was a bit of a disaster! Flash is the best (and only?) way to get good pictures in dark places.

Great guns! We clocked up nearly 3 hours of hardcore birding, including nearly 45 min of intensive stalking of a Noisy Pitta - which we heard multiple times, but never saw!

Got the little Toyota packed, made a final visit to the feeder and we were on the road again. This particular morning we indeed felt blessed not only had we had a fantastic birding morning, but also the weather seemed to smile at us .. for a couple of hours until it started raining again with a vengeance! :-D

Kingfisher Park - Night Spotting - Miscellaneous

2010-05-22T21:09:00.000-07:00

Bush Stone-curlews, a few owls and an army of frogs - that makes great numbers for any night spotting adventure. However, there were still a few goodies to be caught by those spotlights. The little bentwing bat above was a fantastic spot, hanging onto the tiniest crack in one of the bathroom doors at the deserted (and flooded) campsite it looked so peaceful just hanging there sleeping that I only reluctantly decided to use the flash. I stopped the flash output down 2 stops and the photo is taken from a fair distance. It is actually possible to identify the closed eye, the snout and some seriously good sized ears if you examine the photo closely.

The stopping down of the flash was very appropriate for the bat, probably because of the distance. However, always remember to reset your camera after fooling around with settings - in particular after using the timer function!! ;-) - While shooting the bat I got onto the wolf spider below .. the lighting seems to be more appropriate for a bit of boudoir action .. it nearly makes it look cuddly :-D

Gehyra Dubia above had me fooled for a while. I saw its cousin, the Northern Dtellas Gehyra australis when I was in Kakadu and did not notice much of a difference, but a quick look in the reptile book revealed that they each roam in their own parts of Australia .. in particular they like the safety of human constructions - based on my sightings 100% of them run around up-side-down on the ceiling inside toilet blocks.

I think, I wrongfully claimed that the bird sighting had finished for the night(?) Making it back to the establishment, we saw a few Macleay's Honeyeaters curled up for the night - what a sight! They had assumed the disguise of fur balls .. and if it was not because we were told I guess identification would have been troublesome :-D

Fantastic stuff! Nearly 2 hours of spot lighting and we had seen an amazing selection of what moves during night in the far north end of Queensland. We decided to just quietly sit and enjoy the evening and see, what would be attracted by the feeders installed around Kingfisher Park. Before we had to give up and go to bed, we had seen Bush Rats, Fawn-footed Melomys, Northern Brown Bandicoots and a glimpse or two of the clearly distinguishable White-tailed Rat.

Kingfisher Park - Nightly Frog Bonanza

2010-05-22T18:46:00.000-07:00

During my time here in Australia I have seen very few frogs! I have seen many more snakes than frogs .. or at least that was the case until we went on our nightly Kingfisher Park adventure. You could argue that constant rain for a few weeks should give optimal conditions for the small jumpy wet-loving creatures .. and it is a argument the frogs seemed to agree with.

Once again it was absolutely fantastic having "local" guides along, knowledge of where to look and what to listen for comes in exceptional handy when on the hunt for some night pictures. It surprised me how much of the shenanigans we found up high in trees and bushes - guess the naming, i.e. xxx Tree frog, should have been a give away ;-) and the logic probably follows an argument like, if everything is wet you can just as well get away from the predator patrolled ground and have a blast in the top of a palm tree.

As is evident from the amount of pictures - and I promise you that there are more - I had quite a few willing(?) models to practice with and I am actually very happy with the outcome of the exercise. I changed the settings of the camera slightly compared to first time I tried this type of semi-macro night shooting down in Kosciuszko National Park.

The procedure is now to force a faster flash sync speed, I use manual mode and a shutter speed somewhere between 1/160s and 1/250s to ensure that I get no motion blur, the D300 should be able to handle as fast as 1/320s, but for still sitting frogs with the 150mm it should not be needed. If you are trying this yourself, then remember to check how fast you can go and still sync your flash, google is your friend .. or give in and read the manual :-D The closer you get the more light the flash will give you! That is seriously good news, since the closer you get the shallower is your dept of field. This means that if you get in close with the flash you have enough light to close down that aperture and get more of the subject into focus. Shooting at around f/4.0 - f/4.5 I could keep an ISO setting of around 640 and still have enough light for that photon hungry sensor, not bad at all. It all sounds like I knew what I was doing, but do not worry it was all a strike of luck! :-D I was just lucky getting a usable combination of settings early on.

I am in no way a frog expert and while taking the photos I was already grueling over the trouble I would have to go through, trying to find a list of names matching what was displayed. Luckily the Kingfisher Park blog has helped me out by listing most of what we saw. With no certainty at all I will suggest that it looks like a Northern Dwarf Tree Frog in photo 3 and 4. First picture could be a Dainty Green Tree Frog and the last two pictures could be the Jungguy Frog. That leaves only the second picture ... Desert Tree Frog maybe? As always, any suggestions are welcome.

Kingfisher Park - Julatten - Birding in Topgear :-)

2010-05-21T05:31:00.000-07:00

We arrived at Kingfisher Park birdwathers lodge late! There was probably less than one hour of daylight left, but we still managed to squeeze in quite a bit of excitement the first day!

Kingfisher Park is one of those near mythical bird spotting places, it boasts a bird list rivaled by very few places in Australia and maybe more importantly, many of the birds on that list are absolute stunners! The place is all about nature, it covers about 12 acres of grounds which works as a sanctuary for frogs, mammals, reptiles, birds .. and campers - you will not be the only one carrying a pair of binoculars! Keith and Lindsay Fisher, who runs the place, also have a blog with weekly updates on what has been seen in the area - follow the link here.

Before we stopped the car Gemma had already seen her first new bird - Orange-footed Scrubfowl - and before we had paid the room, I had clocked up 3 new species - Macleay's Honeyeater was all over the place! Leaving the packs in the room we set out for a super fast little tour of the property before night fall. Literally 20 meters from our front door we dived into the darkness of the forest and instantly we had our first ever glimpse of the Buff-breasted Paradise-Kingfisher - What an absolutely fantastic bird! It flies like a flash of super bright colors through the dark forest and you are instantly aware that this is something very special.

It soon got too dark for wandering around alone and we retreated to our rented accommodation. We once again had to leave the tent unused, not only was it still raining, but the campsite had been declared unfit for use .. it resembled a swimming pool. A good solid serve of gnocchi and we were ready for what the night would bring - We had signed up for a Kingfisher Park night spotting tour.

All in all we were 5 night spotters heading out into the night for a bit of excitement. The tropics are so very much alive and it seemed the rain had just enhanced the presence of life around us. First stop was to secure an owl, which was easily done - at one point we had views of not one, but two barn owls sitting up high seemingly considering if it was worth the effort getting out there in the rain for a bit of hunting. A popular topic on the nightly walks around Kingfisher Park is apparently the difference between Masked and Barn Owl. According to our guides all of the owls in the pictures below are the Barn variety.

Unfortunately there was no Sooty Owl around, but we were quite happy to see a little group of Bush Stone-curlews .. if it was not for the puddle of water we were standing in, I think G. would have performed a little dance :-D In an attempt of getting a bloggable picture I actually managed to flood my boots, so you will have to do with another owl.

No more birds were seen that night, but lots of other stuff, so I will return shortly with a frog or two and a few mammals .. to be continued.

Daintree National Park - Full Speed the Rest of the Day

2010-05-21T02:28:00.000-07:00

After having done the Jindalba Boardwalk and a bit of driving we decided to head towards Cow Bay. It was not really weather for getting in the water, but judged by the amount of danger signs we were met by at the beach, that is not even something you would consider up north this time of year :-)

There were all the usual warning signs alerting you about the various dangers lurking in the water .. and a few new ones! Up north you have to be particular careful of marine stingers, like the notorious box jellyfish Chironex Fleckeri. As the sign reads, they are present during the summer months, however, if you ask one of the locals about the safety in going swimming, they will argue that the stingers do not know the calender so why take a chance.

Even if we had considered taking a chance with the stingers, we would not have been able to hit the water this rainy afternoon - a good size saltwater crocodile had been seen at the northern end of the beach where a freshwater creek was running into the ocean. Good stuff! A good firm grip on the camera and we headed north to get some pictures of the monster :-)

We never saw the monster of Cow Bay! Maybe we were to busy keeping a good distance to any potential hiding place for a good size reptile? We saw a frog belonging to a very different weight class and a few good birds. Varied Triller male and female below and our first Spectacled Monarch.

A good stroll along the beach and some of the exotic fruits we had stocked up on in Cairns and we were ready for the final part of our Daintree adventure.

As some of you readers might remember, we had invested in a never ending cruise ticket allowing us to take another go on the Daintree River, yours truly have a hard time saying no to free stuff, so we once again found ourselves on the River in a tinny. This time about 13km downstream from Daintree Village.

Crocodiles are very clever animals! They understand that there is no reason to fight the force of a fast flowing river. So instead of using huge amounts of energy swimming against the current, they will just let the river take them downstream and wait for calmer waters before making their way back to a favorite sand bank. This also meant that we had much better views of these ancient creatures during this our third cruise of the Daintree River.

A couple of salties and a green tree snake or two seems to be what people can expect on these tours. Not bad at all, I managed to get a few slightly better pictures during this trip, including the juvenile crock in the very top of this blog post.

All good - the Daintree is a absolutely fantastic spot! It would have been lovely having more time to explore, but in our attempt of covering as much of Far North Queensland as possible we were heading for the Atherton tableland where we were expecting equally great adventures.

As the sun sank in the East we had quite a few good bird sightings. In less than 5 minuets of driving from the ferry, a Blue-winged Kookaburra and a flock of Channel-billed Cuckoos made us stop for a few pictures. Whereas the usual suspects, such as Forest Kingfisher and Yellow-bellied Sunbird already at this stage seemed so very common :-D

Daintree National Park - Into the Wild ... on Boardwalks :-)

2010-05-18T02:00:00.000-07:00

Across the river and into the wild! Daintree National Park is something very special, outside Australia it is probably not as famous as Kakadu National Park or the Great Barrier Reef, but it is one of those places that you will do yourself a great favor by visiting!

Being on a super tight schedule only having 5 days in the far north, we had to take some brutal decisions when it came to decide how we would be spending time. So crossing the river early in the morning we already knew that we would only have 1 day in the rain forest so better get on with it! :-)

For the first time the constant rain was actually helping us out. The rivers north in the park had swelled during the last days of rain and made it four wheel drive only .. Not having shelled out the donuts for a proper river-crossing-capable rent-a-car we were left with a chunk of the Daintree National Park perfectly fit for a 1-2 day visit if you gave it a good go .. so we did! :-)

You can go to all the outlooks and enjoy the vistas and you can sit in your car and in awe see the raging river blocking the road in front, but the most fantastic thing we did during our one day in the Daintree was to dive into all that greenness - the forest up there is just so incredibly full of energy! You can nearly feel how things are growing around you; warm, wet and luxuriant vegetation.

It is quite appropriate to visit a rain forest during rain, you really get that feeling of how potent the forest is around you. It might have hurt our wildlife spotting efforts slightly, for the birds it would make sense to fly somewhere dry! We picked up a few good birds though, including the Wompoo Fruit-Dove in the picture above - what a great bird! I had contemplated a bit on how to setup the camera, all that water made it near impossible to change lenses while walking in the forest. I chose to go for the macro lens; 150mm is obviously a bit shorter than the reach of the Bigma (500mm), but in the dense dark forest you do not need the excessive reach and the f/2.8 of the macro comes in very very handy when under the foliage cover.

Great stuff - really great stuff - so great indeed that I have included a link here to the far north Queensland real estate :-) You definitely get more space for your $ than in Sydney .. it would not be the worst place to retire to one day when I get old .. in a few years - 3 in fact :-D

Morning Birding on the Daintree River

2010-05-04T04:02:00.000-07:00

We decided to get our Cairns holiday up in gear by going in hard! An early morning 2 hours of birdwatching from Chris Dahlberg's little boat on the Daintree River seemed an excellent way to get the day off to a cracking start!

6.30am and the rain was pouring down, but with a couple of strategically well placed umbrellas Gemma was able to keep herself and my camera gear semi dry. Luckily it was by far the worst in the first 15-20 minuets or so after which the rain turned into a mere drizzle.

I once again had to convince myself that the camera is just a tool and built for use - if it cannot be used it has no value ... actually I do not know how clever an approach that is, but I am happy to inform the readers that there is still value left in the light-loving-box.

Chris Dahlberg's dawn birding cruise on the Daintree River is quite famous for being some of the most exciting birdwatching you can do and despite of the weather being less than mediocre it was absolutely fantastic stuff! The Great Billed Heron above being one of the highlights.

As I have mentioned before, we had pushed our luck by placing our Cairns trip very close to the rainy season and the cruise we attended was indeed the first of the season, so no one had a clue of what we would see. Once again - having a knowledgeable local guide is golden when you want to get full value of a new habitat! Chris did an absolutely fantastic job taking us around on the river, pointing out rare and wonderful birds and telling anecdotes about water, trees and wildlife.

We did not see the Papuan Frogmouth and we did not see the Little Kingfisher, but otherwise we saw more or less everything else worth seeing :-D Chris keeps a record of the wildlife seen during his trips, which can be found here. I have to admit that I am once again badly late with these blog posts - more than a month in fact, we participated on the tour 2nd of April - there is a direct link to our sightings here.

As I already mentioned, we were quite happy to see the Great-billed Heron, one of the birds I did not see when I was in Kakadu, Gemma did her little ticking dance after spotting a Black Bittern and we were both happy with Gould's Bronze-Cuckoo (now lumped with Little B-C) and Double-eyed Fig-Parrot plus all the rest.

Daintree Village And The First Encounter With The River

2010-05-03T01:41:00.000-07:00

It kept raining all the way north! Good news though, there was absolutely no trouble finding accommodation for the night - guess no other tourists were crazy enough to drive out of Cairns ;-) Having a few hours of daylight left and 50% of the party battling Jet-lag it was clear that we had to do something.

Crocodile Express definitely had a name that suggested it could keep little G. awake :-D so within 10 min of entering Daintree Village, we had sorted out where to sleep and gotten ourselves Daintree River cruise tickets that would allow us to cruise all week if we wanted.

Sailing up and down the Daintree River was a great choice, doing the same in a boat with a roof was priceless! Finally being able to shoot the camera without having to expose it the the wrath of the elements was a joy.

Being out of your usual habitat, you realize how important it is to have a good guide - your vision is just not tuned into the type of wildlife you can find along a tropical river bank unless you are used to it. We were alright in finding the birds, but if it was not for our excellent local guide, we would probably not have seen the two Green Tree Snakes.

Next was the sales argument of the trip: You cannot really call your cruise "Crocodile Express" without delivering a few "salties". Once again, our guide delivered in the most impressive way possible .. obviously he knew where the croc had been seen earlier during the day, but still he spotted a croc so hidden, that it took 3-4 passes with the boat before some of us tourists got it and after that, he had to pull out the laser pointer and put a green dot directly on the creature to give everyone a view.

My pictures are not great, but conditions were such that it was warmer for the saltwater crocodile to stay in the water than to crawl onto land, hence exposing very little skin above water .. my companion had brought her underwater camera, but vigorously refused to help by doing her part of the photography and the opportunity of getting a couple of "different" croc close-ups. :-D

We spent an enjoyable 1h45m on the river before getting back to land. Accommodation was less than 200 meters from the jetty. While checking in we also managed to book tickets for the early morning birdwatching cruise with Chris Dahlberg. One of the events we had been looking forward to and which would prove to be one of the highlights of the trip. :-)

Fantastic feeling to get into a dry cabin and to put on some dry clothes! We had a great supply of tasty camping food, that could equally well be cooked in the cabin kitchen. While cooking we could enjoy the views down over the paddock where the Cattle Egrets had teamed up with the cows .. not all of us where 100% alert at this point and as it got dark and the Cane Toads started jumping around the cabin, only yours truly made it out of bed to immortalize the event.

Fantastic day and with a little luck it would not rain the next day ...???

Carins Esplanade - A Wader-watching Paradise

2010-04-30T19:46:00.000-07:00

We did not have optimal weather! The panorama above should be proof of that, however, it did not matter much, since I cannot imagine it harmed the number of waders along the Cairns Esplanade. As usual the best way to see new birds is to change habitat! .. and since I have not done much around tropical mudflats in the past it proved very rewarding taking a stroll down the boardwalk in center of Cairns.

I wrote in the previous post that the boardwalk was very cleverly designed and I really mean that. It allows the visitor to get incredibly close without interfering with the action below. You cannot get onto the mudflats (and I cannot imagine why you should want to) and the birds have realized this, so they have developed a no-interest-attitude to what is going on up above on the boardwalk. This might also be partly due to the fact that the track is lifted up to a few meters above where the birds wandering around are searching for food.

Before we could even see water, we started seeing exciting birds. The trees were humming with Metallic Starlings and Varied Honeyeaters (both new to me) and you had to be careful not to step on one of the peaceful doves running around between your legs.

The southern end of the Esplanade gave excellent views of a good collection of egrets and herons. Photographically it was a bit of a challenge, an ever changing combination of rain, clouds, shadow and light made it hard, throw in the fact that we had arrived at absolute lowest tide, allowing the birds to stand furthest away from the boardwalk and you have yourself a challenge.

One of the reasons these Cairns posts have been so badly delayed is the time it has taken to actually identify what we managed to see :-D Waders are hard! - notice that I am not saying that they are harder than small birds in the deep dark Daintree rain forest - but boy is it hard when they are changing between breeding and non-breeding plumage, throw in the sexual dimorphism and I will have to admit that my Simpson & Day was just not sufficient to ID everything we saw. The Michael Morcombe book is better for waders, but there are still pictures of birds that I am not sure about so if any of you readers out there want to chip in, I can assure you that you are very welcome.

Most of the pictures in this post should however be sorted. It took a while to recognize the two Great Knots in the picture after the Terek Sandpiper down below. Also, not being super sharp with my waders, I was quite intrigued by the little colorful bird above the whimbrel, but trawling through the pictures it looks like a Red-necked Stint with a plumage somewhere between breeding and non-breeding .. I should probably have realized that much faster, since that is a frequent guest around Sydney.

The Grey-tailed Tattler was a bit of a headache as well, until I got hold of Michael Morcombe's field guide. My own book gave very few hints to how to distinguish the grey-tailed from the wandering only providing pictures of them in non-breeding coloration. Lesser Sand Plover below was much easier - a great little bird! All in all we spend a very rewarding hour or so wandering up and down the Esplanade before we started getting nervous about where we would be sleeping for the night.

Our plan had been to cover as much of Tropical North Queensland as possible and camp as we moved around, for the first day we had planned on making our way north to the Daintree river. Considering the weather we decided against the camping, it would simply be impossible to keep things dry - or to dry wet gear - in a wet tent, however, we still liked the idea of getting to Daintree River. That unfortunately also meant that we had to plan a bit ahead and sort out accommodation for the night. So despite of having super duper birding at the Cairns Esplanade we decided to fire up the rented car and push north .. weather would probably also be better up there!..???

Cairns - Easter Escape

2010-04-29T04:05:00.000-07:00

Cairns for Easter, how good was that! :-) Easter had proven a bit of a challenge to arrange this year, I truly enjoy the road trip-camping combination type of holidaying, but at the same time there are a few hot spot locations in Australia that are not easily reached by land-based transport out of Sydney if you are restricted by the time frame of a long weekend - even taking into account the long-distance-superiority of the Magna. Cairns is one of those places - others are; Broome, Alice Springs and Tasmania, hopefully I will be able to report from a few of these places later during the year, but for now it will be about Cairns for a while.

Being a bit creative with the use of extra holidays we managed to get the needed flight tickets without having to donate blood or organs - just! Boy is Easter expensive(?). The result being that we managed to get 5 days in the Tropical North Queensland at the cost of only one additional holiday and a few dollars. In the wisdom of hindsight it could be argued that pushing that far north early April is like playing with water .. and it was, we probably had 4.5 days of good quality rain that would make any outback farmer dance around in happiness. We did not dance, but realized that with a few changes to the plan we could easily deal with it; no camping - the tent would never dry again, and be careful with your electronic gear, including camera and lenses. I was seriously afraid of how the camera would deal with such conditions, but at the same time it is just a tool and it only has value when being used. I can now happily state that it is still alive and that modern cameras can take much(!) much(!) more water than I would ever had expected before this trip! :-D Our only casualty was a mobile phone that did not like the continuous exposure to 100% humidity. The rain may have hurt us slightly when it comes to the amount of wildlife we saw, particular bird count. However, looking at the outcome of the trip it is probably to our benefit that we were slowed down slightly, otherwise it would have been seriously stressful having to tick all those species :-D Otherwise the rain was no problem, because as they say up there "it is warm rain" and in a weird way quite pleasant.

Arriving in Cairns little G. immediately fell in love with the most exciting fruit and vege market I have ever seen. Initially I desperately tried to argue the case of how much more "fruitful" it would be to spend more time at the Cairns Esplanade 200 meters further down the road, but in the end I had to give in and agree that they have some seriously fantastic fruits, which gave us lots of tasty treats throughout our little holiday.

Finally we made our way down to the Cairns Esplanade! Weather was not great, but who cares when you are at this very cleverly designed boardwalk, which allow you to wander along the water having scenic views of Cairns and the mountains and rain forest surrounding it, without disturbing the life of the mudflats happening a couple of meters below.

As you might already have guessed, we concentrated more on the mudflats down below than the scenic vistas :-D It was absolutely crawling with life. The mudskippers were doing fantastic acrobatic moves to attract the opposite sex .. and to fend of rivals. Best guess is that this species is part of the Periophthalmus family. I remember reading about mudskippers many years ago when I first started being interested in aquarium fish, fantastic animals that are truly amphibious, as long as they are wet they can breath through their skin(!) allowing them to access food sources unreachable to other fish. Arriving at the Esplanade at low tide also allowed us to see armies of mud crabs roaming around feeding on the dirt, but we were probably more impressed by the Fiddler crabs sitting slightly closer to the boardwalk displaying its enormous colorful claw.

As you might have noticed, I have not included a single bird picture. I will make up for that shortly by a full blog post dedicated to the feathered wildlife of the Cairns Esplanade - see you soon.

Surfs Up in Bondi - A Good Excuse For a Photowalk

2010-04-18T04:50:00.000-07:00

Once again I teamed up with Yiing for a photowalk around Coogee. We had not really planned where to go, but with the sun shining and a generally quite fantastic day the vote took us north along the coast .. and there was something about a surf competition at Bondi.

As we got closer to Bondi we realized that the surf competition was indeed well and truly on and a few celebrity surfers had made their way to Bondi - including Kelly Slater.

Taking surf pictures is soooo rewarding and dare I say easy(?), at least compared to the struggle I normally have when trying to frame those birds - the surfers are where the waves are - simple as that! :-D Despite arriving late we probably ended up in a near perfect position up on the wall just south of the beach, where we had great views to the action on the water and the shenanigan on the beach.

Fantastic stuff! Great seeing an event like that and fun trying to shoot a very different type of pictures. However, it had taken us close to 2 hours walking to Bondi and "yes" we could probably do the return journey faster, but still it would take a while making it back to Coogee, so we decided to leave before the price ceremony.

On our way to Bondi, we had actually "practiced" taking surf pictures of a couple of surfers at Tamarama. I have included some of the pictures here, this particular day I guess the organizers would have been better off relocating the competition a beach further south, Tamarama was sporting some super good waves and the closeness of the break made it a pure joy to take pictures there.

Barren Grounds Nature Reserve

2010-04-16T19:56:00.000-07:00

Jarrod convinced me that we needed to go to Barren Grounds Nature Reserve for a bit of bushwalking. I was easily convinced since BGNR is a great place to walk, but more importantly it sports a unique type of habitat, hanging swamp plateau, that is home to a great selection of wildlife that is otherwise very hard to find. Some celebrity inhabitants are Ground Parrot, Eastern Bristlebird and Southern Emu-wren - I needed the GP and Jarrod, who more or less has to hold a bird in the hand before he is convinced that he actually has truly seen it, have so far managed to avoid eye contact with the SEW.

Weather was not on our side - at all! Wet and windy and a annoying fog hanging low above the scrub made it nearly impossible to spot anything further away than arms reach, however, as always there is something going on when you get you lazy arse off the couch and the humid air had the advantage that it was much easier than normal to spot the various spider webs along the path, which resulted in an encounter with what might just be the prettiest spider I have ever seen: Gasteracantha minax or Jewel Spider between friends :-)

I am terribly sorry about the poor quality of the pictures, having expected a sunny day on the highland heath I had not brought the macro lens and even if I had I would probably not have been super happy changing lenses in the middle of all the wind and wetness. So you will have to do with high ISO and pseudo macro capability in combo with the spider sitting on a very bouncy branch.

Having seen next to no birds the entire day, it was quite a bit of a surprise when the Bassian Thrush in the picture above suddenly appeared on the path in front of us. Those of you who follow the blog regularly will know that it was the only new bird I managed to (nearly) see down in Wilson's Promontory so quite nice getting another (less than medium good) look at it.

Walking in Australia is often limited by how much water you can carry, not having that problem this particular day, we decided to get some kilometers in the boots and managed to clock up 20km before we were back at the Magna - not bad going for a lazy Saturday :-)

All good, great walking and a beautiful drive down south. My trusted co-pilot had once again(?) managed to get us (more or less!) straight to our target location - with a little telephonic help from his better half at home :-D On our way home the only unforeseen happening was the timing of a few hundred cows deciding that the grass was greener on the other side - but I blame no one for that ;-)