Wilson's Promontory - Sealers Cove Wildlife

It took a while to find the campsite - it was located just south of the beach on the other side of a little creek, that at low tide could easily be crossed with water levels not much above knee height. After my camping experience the previous night I was very keen on getting my tent up in a "private" area :-) I did not need to worry, the campsite was absolutely fantastic with small isolated areas where you could truly feel happily isolated.

Tent up and ready for a bit of adventure, I started walking south and had probably done less than 200m before I encountered the good sized and very photogenic Tiger Snake above. Snakes in general are very secretive and hard to spot, they know you are coming long before you have a chance to get a look at them and they nearly always choose to disappear without sound or trace. I would love to claim that my luck with the sweetheart above was due to my bush-ninja skills, which allows me to float through the bush without impacting the ground, however, reality was that I had been standing still like stone for quite a few minuets trying to get pictures of a bird, when the tiger snake crawled onto the path few meters in front of me - how lucky can you be? :-D I probably had more than 2 minuets in company with the TS before it disappeared into the scrub on the other side of the path and was gone .. needless to say that I now how quite a few Mb of TS pictures.

The bird above - behind the bush :-) - was not the one I was stalking before the snake incident, but probably the most exciting bird I saw during my Prom excursion. Judged on the pattern on the chest I guess there is a good chance of it being a Bassian Thrush. I managed to get better view when it flew, but no pictures.


Good walking! It was great not having to carry the backpack along and I managed to cover quite a bit of ground. The bird count being low was easily forgotten with a great selection of lizards around included a few that I do not recall having seen before.


The one above looks like an indigenous painting with stripes, dots and great colors. As the sun disappeared I returned to camp, once again planning an early night. I was supposed to return the car before 4pm Sunday, I wanted good time for the drive so I was aiming at leaving the prom before 12pm .. before I could leave I would have to make the walk back to the car park at Mount Oberon, catch a bus to the campsite and also I was expecting that a shower would be high on the "things I would like to have time for"-list :-D .. so I was planning to leave the campsite not later than 7am.

I had to find a better home for the little spider above before I could start cooking and while choosing my campsite I had been very happy with the presence of a good solid log, which looked like it would do the job of a comfy sofa .. as I started cooking the little fellow below popped its head out of my planned resting place and after some careful consideration I decided that the log was not to be used by me that evening .. I guess the combination of a tiger snake sighting and the fact that the potential sofa in question had many holes of various sizes made it an easy choice to stand up while eating. :-D

Ben Boyd National Park - Saltwater Creek, Boyd's Tower And A Bit Of Evening Adventure

Snakes are probably some of the most interesting animals you can stumble upon down under here in Australia! Interesting is exactly the right word, it has nothing to do with if you "like" or "hate" snakes, I probably used to be slightly on the scared side when it came to imagining how an encounter would be, but the more you read about these highly developed animals the more impressive and interesting they are - with a healthy understanding of the need to observe from a distance. On our way towards Boyd's tower in the northern end of the south part of the park this Tiger Snake was crossing the road just in front of the Magna. Rapidly blocking the breaks and having the Nikon handy gave just enough time to catch a few snapshots of this shy impressive creature.

Benjamin Boyd went through enormous amount of trouble to build his 20 meter tall tower. Initially the plan was to use it as a lighthouse, but as with Benjamin's own story the tower has had a colorful past.

The area around the tower looked promising; scrubby coastal heath with good possibilities of over viewing large areas and some patches with dense taller scrubby trees giving excellent opportunities for birds to hide .. in fact they were hiding(?) so well that we saw next to no feathered wildlife while walking around in the area surrounding Boyd's tower.

It was getting late and with a thick layer of clouds coming in, light was getting worse and our chances of spotting and documenting (by getting pictures) any rare bird where disappearing fast.

We decided to cover the entirety of the park by visiting Saltwater Creek Campsite and see if we would be lucky and spot a few of the specialties of the park, such as, Hooded Plover or maybe even a Ground Parrot on the heath area just south of the campsite. It was a great walk, we saw a White-bellied Sea-eagle cruising along the coast, but no sign of a tick :-) Managed to find a few wild orchids though and a good old fashion kangaroo grassing on the beach.

What a great day! Full speed all day and we had managed to cover nearly all parts of the national park. Sitting at the campsite I have now learned that when it goes slightly dark it is time to take the light hungry Bigma off the camera and take advantage of the built-in flash and the light collecting properties of the macro.

As the very last light of the day disappeared a last chance of a tick emerged on the sky; Swifts! Pulled a few photos with the macro and will have to go through them more carefully one day, but it mostly looked like White-throated Needletails .. great bird, but not a tick.

Ben Boyd National Park had a final little treat in place for us. When we arrived at the campsite, the people leaving the spot we had reserved for the weekend had pointed out that we should be careful with leaving food around since a gang of possums roaming the area opportunistically associated the presence of humans with presence of food, apparently they had lost any fright of humans.

The little fellow above was jostling through our camp looking for any leftovers not even noticing that we where still standing around chatting and brushing our teethes. Little G. decided to hide some fruit in the tent for breakfast instead of carrying it all back to the car. Amazingly what we believe to be a possum could smell the goodies on the other side of the thin tent wall and decided to try to eat an apple through the tent wall :-D

Ben Boyd National Park is a great spot! We saw heaps of exciting stuff; snakes, orchids, possums and bats flying around the campsite, super duper spot with some fantastic camping next to a great little beach. We tried some snorkeling which was slightly disappointing, but hey how much can you expect from one place? ;-) Leaving early Monday morning we were heading for something very different; Kosciuszko National Park.

Herdsman Lake - Birding in Perth

Herdsman Lake is one of those fantastic isolated pockets of nature that continues to be prime quality real wild habitat even though it is entirely surrounded by city. I have been there once before and remembered it as a truly breathtaking place - partly due to the swampy nature of the place, so with a bit of Jutlandian negotiation skills I managed to convince the rest of the holidaying gang that an hour in a smelly swamp was the pinnacle of what Perth could offer on a lazy Sunday afternoon - from my point of view, we were not disappointed :-)

When it comes to waterbirds not many places do better than Herdsman Lake! Entering the boardwalks it is quickly forgotten that Perth is just on the other side of the trees and it seems the birds have reached a similar state of relaxation. As an example, the picture of the Blue-billed Duck above has not been cropped, indeed I had to zoom out to get the entire bird in the frame, since it was so relaxed about the Dane jumping around trying to get the sun in the right place.

Great Crested Grebe above and Yellow-billed Spoonbill below are birds that I have seen every single time I have been to Herdsman Lake - twice that is :-) It is actually the only place in Australia that I have seen the YBS.

Once again time was running out and we had to consider leaving to attend our last Perth dinner for this time. However the Lake had another little surprise in stall for us.

When we arrived at the lake a group of people was leaving and had alerted us to the presence of a Tiger Snake in the reeds next to one of the viewing platforms. As you can imagine this information had spurred us on at rapid speed trying to get photographic evidence of this species of snake that I had not seen before. Despite using quite a bit of time at the spot they had pointed out we did not see the Tiger. On the way back, however, we were successful! :-)

I know the picture is not best ever ... one could argue that having the head of the snake in the shot would be nice :-) But I am sure the readers will understand that none of us felt like trying to manipulate our newly found little friend into a more photogenic position.
The internet is full of pages trying to list the most venomous/deadly/dangerous snakes in the world. It is not straight forward, since a very venomous snake might be placid or due to its habitat very unlikely to get into contact with humans. In fact, the most deadly venomous creature in Australia is the European Honey bee! Still though talking potent venom, the Tiger Snake is up there with the best of them - if you were a mouse, the Tiger Snake would be the 4th worst snake to be bitten by - see the list of LD50 values here. Australia is doing pretty well on that list! ;-)

Driving back we witnessed another Australia speciality - a bush fire in some park/bush land in the middle of Perth! Firefighters were at the scene before there was any change of the fire developing, but still a reminder of, how different a part of the world this is.

This post will be the last from our Perth trip - I promise you there are still more pictures, but it is wise to save some stories for the next trip. One last incident is worth mentioning though, as we were driving towards the airport late Sunday night a Barn Owl flew across the road in front of the car. That brought the total number of new birds seen during the trip up to a respectable eleven, including a couple of very restricted species - not bad at all :-)