Bicentennial Park - A Bit Of Macro And Stuff

When it gets really stinking hot you just have to bring water and you will have a great day in Bicentennial Park - every other sane Sydneysider will be at the beach! However, be careful about leaving the water in your car (even if it is white!) Since it will be close to boiling when you get back - consequence being that you drink 0.5L and turbo sweat 0.5L as a result thereof :-)

Suddenly having an extra lens there is not straight forward! Having been used to the Bigma handling 95% of my shooing; long, short (with stitching) and semi-macro makes it very hard taking it off. However, my new macro lens has some qualities that makes it superior for certain types of photography - one of them obviously being proper macro - I just need to learn to shoot that type of photos.

A great example is the two Golden Orb Weaver spider shots - the one above is taken with the Bigma at about half zoom, somewhere around where you get the best magnification ratio (at 500mm the minimum focus distance is significantly increased). The picture below is with the Sigma 150mm f/2.8 Macro and you suddenly realize that when you get really close a hole new story is unfolding. The macro shot is actually not really good, I had a hard time getting a sufficient depth of field, at least to cover the travel of the insect while they were being blown around by the wind :-/ Handholding macro shots outside under windy conditions will be one of the things I will have to optimize in 2010! :-D

Finally having gotten the Macro on I decided to keep it there for a little bit and had a bit of luck finding a Leaf curling spider that had established its home in a sunny and less windy spot.

A super smart little spider that is truly taking advantage of its surroundings. They are very common here around Sydney, but often people do not notice them since they sit inside their little leaf only having the legs resting on their web, detecting any vibration caused by potential prey.

When you get optimal conditions - and a preying spider might be one of the most still and optimal targets you can hope for - my new Sigma macro is scary sharp ;-) If you press the picture above you are taken to a higher resolution version, for a bit of spider leg-hair examination.

Well, after a while the prime lens got a bit restrictive and I returned to the Bigma for a bit of water shooting. Having a leaky underwater camera has hurt the underwater content of this blog badly so I will try to make up for it with a few wet ones.

I was happy about the eel above, I have tried to get a similar photo before, but maybe because of the heat and the consequential low oxygen level this day the underwater creatures where swimming closer to the surface ... or the fact that an entire 7 membered family was standing bombarding the water with old bread next to me :-)

Fantastic stuff! The possibility of carbon loading (or once again the low oxygen levels?) also attracted a couple of turtles - they look pretty scary close up!

Great day in the park! Bicentennial park is a fantastic package of various habitats and therefore packs an excellent selection of wildlife to look at. From a photographic point of view it is nearly as good as going to the zoo - the park being one of the busiest in Sydney has made the wildlife very relaxed about having screaming human activity around them, so relaxed indeed that you are more successful by walking straight towards a bird and shoot your pictures instead of trying to creep towards it .. crawling in public parks have been known to be considered suspicious behavior ;-)

Bicentennial Park - Double The Fun? Additional Material

There you go! I was so sure that the Godwit in the previous post was not the Bar-tailed since there was not even shadow of barring under the tail, however, I am very privileged having some expert birders reading the blog and it was pointed out that the slightly up-turned beak is not a feature normally associated with the Black-tailed G. So can it be a Hudsonian? (a bird I did not even consider, since it is in the vagrant bird section of my book, Simpson & Day - Morcombe has included it in the main section though) Or is it just a Bar-tailed without bars?

Suggestions are most welcome :-)

It is quite embarrassing that I probably did not choose the best picture for my potential cuckoo - sorry! Some of you know my approach to taking pictures; if you are not that good you just have to take a lot more :-D so I had quite a few of the little feathered guy in question. Here is a few more showing the coloration around the tail and the shadow behind and around the eye.

Bicentennial Park - Double The Fun?

Getting the jet lag under control, I managed to drag my carcass out of bed an early Sunday morning and fire up the Magna. Not having little G. here I felt that I should take advantage and visit a particular smelly, but fantastic, bird spot in Bicentennial Park - Triangular Pond.

A few specialties of the pond had returned this year, the Lewin's Rail and Spotless Crake, whom I had acquainted myself with nearly a year ago at the exact same pond. Problem is, however, that you need to time your visit; if it is to dry the birds will have left and if the water level is up high they will not need to leave their papyrus plant hideaway to eat. Well, I was too late and hence had to take the full brunt of smell fuming of the near dry pond.

Well, luckily Bicentennial Park has much more to offer and I happily left the stinking swamp for some fresher waters.

Running around with the camera there is always a challenge, despite having seen nearly all (see below) of the birds that inhabits Bicentennial Park, I do not have pictures of all of them and in particular I miss good pictures for a large part of them. The Black-tailed Godwit below should be sorted now though - I have close up of the no-barred tail as well ;-)

I might have been a bit fast while claiming that I have seen nearly all of the BP birds, the one below has me puzzled and once again I would like suggestions from the readers of the blog. Seeing the barring below the wing had me thinking Cuckoo, but ...?

I think, I have said before that the ponds in Sydney Olympic Park are some of the best places around for (water-)bird in flight photos. Also, because of the constant exposure to (noisy) humans it makes it one of the best places to get really close to birds without them taking off. The male Darter below was obviously very happy with its seat and decided to try to fool me into believing that it was a part of the branch rather than having to fly away.

The photo looses quite a bit of the sharpness by being down sized to 640 * 400, but I can promise you that the original is spot on! If just all birds was that photogenic :-)

... will have to bite this post into a few postings: To be continued.

Darwin & Kakadu Escape, Day 1

Arriving in Darwin at midnight has the advantage of you having ample space on the roads while getting used to a manual gear stick again. The inconvenience on the other hand being the increased difficulty of finding appropriate accommodation for the night. Since the night was already well advanced I decided to rough it a bit and see how comfortable a night in the Yaris would be ... Lets just say that I used a few hours trying out all 4 seats and none of them proved much better than sleeping on gravel.

Early morning I happily left the Yaris for a quick morning stroll in the park - it seems there are a lot of Toyota owners in Darwin, since the park was full of people that had actually chosen to sleep on gravel rather than in their car. I happily saluted at least 50 happy campers slowly waking to greet a new day. But quickly got a bit scared about the fuel economy of the toyota, since the greetings were constantly meet with a plea for money .. guess I was lucky to go for the 1.3L!

CousCous is dead - long live gnocchi! :-) I have started really liking to cook with gnocchi in the bush, they take a fraction more gas than CousCous, but makes a much better meal .. and will function as an excellent (but over time shrinking) pillow. I got myself fueled up on gnocchi, fruit, gas, water and other necessities in Darwin and apart from using 2 * 20 min in two carefully selected parks I could not wait to get out of Darwin and take on Kakadu.


Center of Kakadu lies approximately 260 kilometers East of Darwin, with a speed limit of 130 most of the way that makes the drive a piece of cake ... except there are quite a few places on the way worth visiting and the automobile I was flying had a sound profile going exponential towards the stratosphere when pushed above 110km/t.
First stop on the way was Fogg Dam (Danes have to be very careful with the pronunciation here) which constitute a failed attempt of rice farming turned into excellent wetlands only 70km out of Darwin. This was also the first encounter with signs warning about the risk of being eaten by a crock!



Fogg Dam was an amazing place - please take a look at more pictures by following the Picasa link at the end of this post - but Kakadu was calling and I was getting tired. When it comes to welcoming tourists Kakadu does really well. Soon after you have entered Kakadu you can pick up the "visitor guide" that tells you everything the average tourist needs to know - and probably even a bit more - in combo with a very helpful visitor centre in Bowali I decided to camp at Malabanjbanjdju, not because it was particular good, but because I was tired and it was close. Hm ... next to a billabong means:

Only one thing to do - eat so much gnocchi deliciousness that no crock would be able to swallow me and then hit bed hard so that I could be in top shape for day 2, just before going to bed I went down and took a look at the water, no crocks spotted only a snake - I could sleep safe :-D

Darwin & Kakadu Escape, Day 1