Royal National Park

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.

Cairns - Easter Escape

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.

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

Fish Photography with the Bigma? :-)

Before jumping in the water at Clovelly, we had seen a Black-browed Albatross passing probably less than 50 meters from the shore. So after our dip and a second breakfast we decided to test our luck at the cliffs around Long Bay.

It all started out very normal a steady stream of various feathered wildlife was passing by and little G had already started ticking.

Small fish are eaten by bigger fish ... and more or less everything else as well! In addition to the underwater dangers throw in a bit of peril from above; albatrosses, gannets and a few thousand gulls and you know how dangerous it is to be little fish :-) Moving towards the clifftops we could see at least two large collections of seabirds preying on bait balls, one of them a few hundred meters from shore, but the other in range for a few pictures.

The feast slowly moved closer to the coast and we were able to see the predators attacking from below.

We talked to a couple of spear fishers standing evaluating the situation. Apparently the waters just north of Long Bay is a superb spot for good size targets if you are equipped with a speargun ... and do not mind the odd shark measuring you up ;-)

Great guns! It seems that there is always something happening out there when you get your lazy bum of the sofa :-)

Have started considering buying a new lens! I obviously need something wider than 50mm at some stage ... I guess(?) But imagine how exciting it would be to do a bit of macro photography! :-) Tempted by the Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 for the wide end and the Sigma 150mm f/2.8 macro for the small stuff.

Botany Bay National Park - Southern Emu-wren Country

Once again the shining bonnet of the Magna was pointed towards the south end of Sydney on an early Saturday morning. Again the destination was the scrubby bush covered coastal area between Kurnell and Boat Harbour, with a planned rendezvous with the Shasha + Amoore cycling team conveniently pit-stopping at the mangrove viewing platform few kilometers from Kurnell.

Flanked by an Eastern Curlew, some Bar-tailed Godwits, the little Solomon and once again an upbeat Sintic I was in great company, which was of great value, since apparently the peloton had started the morning stage at a rather leisurely speed.

Well worth the wait, the newlyweds were in fine fettle and the conversation very entertaining. As usual a volley of topics were dealt with in an appropriately humorous style, including sorting out the migration pathways of the various waders, the quality of old Nikon glass and more importantly where to go camping next weekend - amazing how a few minuets of face to face chat can solve what would otherwise need 15+ emails ;-)

As the peloton headed west, we took off towards the windswept coastal scrub - The land of the Southern Emu-wren! To shorten an already quite long story - "Yes" luck was once again smiling our way! Sintic saw his Albatross ... next time it will hopefully be less than 1 kilometer away :-D But more importantly we had excellent views of first a single male Southern Emu-wren and later a brief, but close encounter with a pair.


Great guns - I had seen the SE-w before, but did not have a picture, so glad to sort that out. My two companions were equally thrilled and I am afraid a spark has ignited what will turn into a raging fire ;-)

Botany Bay With An American Twist

Got up early Saturday morning, I had a little package flying in from America - not bad at all :-) After dragging the usual +70kg of luggage up into the apartment and a bit of whining about the level of jetlag. We soon realized that unless the rest of the Saturday was going to be conducted with closed eyes, we had to get out where there was sunlight, a gentle sea breeze and preferable a bit of excitement happening ... well, well off to the south end of Botany Bay National park, where recent rumors would know, that a bit of wildlife action was going on.

First surprise was the spotting of a bewildered cyclist obviously dropped by the peloton, but with the usual cyclist attitude, claiming that he would be able to catch up with the break-away after a little rest. Unfortunately he had managed to scare away any sign of wildlife around him - probably due to the heavy breathing - and after a few polite greetings we continued south and saw him head back towards the vibrant suburb of Marrickville.

We had a great walk along the coast, the pure beauty of the place made it difficult to fall asleep and when the vistas were not enough, a bit of balancing along the cliffs edge made sure we were all alert :-)

The Grass Owl was hiding, which gives me a one up on the American ticking machine, but boy does she attract wildlife!! :-) It was all happening at sea, on land and in the air.

We managed to get sufficient views (but less than impressive pictures) of a Tawny-crowned Honeyeater taking a bath. Saw a few albatrosses and a Southern Giant-Petrel, which was very nice after having used quite a few month at the cliffs around Long Bay only being able to spot the northern cousin. But the highlight of the day was no doubt having eye-to-eye contact with a Black-shouldered Kite.

Great day down south, impressive effort to get off the plane and hit the bush straight away ... have a sneaking suspicion though that those binoculars were held high once and a while to sneakily hide a closing eye or two ;-)

Bushell's Lagoon and Castlereagh Nature Reserve

A few kilometers north west of Pitt Town you find Bushell's Lagoon. After a little Scheyville National Park detour we crossed the Hawkesbury at Windsor and headed towards the next Lagoon on the agenda.

Bushell's Lagoon is a great spot! Contrary to the Pitt Town equivalent you have the option of walking a bit around getting close to the wildlife and smelling nature. We got a glimpse of an Australian water dragon and according to a reliable source it is a great spot for seeing Red-bellied black snakes during summer. (Luckily?) It was still too cold for the snakes, but we had excellent views of a bit of feathered wildlife, which seems very relaxed - nearly curious - about a couple of walkers entering their domain.

Was quite happy with a series of photos, including the one above, where I managed to catch a few sharp ones of a particular inquisitive Golden-headed Cisticola getting close. The water birds were swarming like planes around Kingsford Smith and once again an Australian Pelican with nearly 2 meter wingspan is an excellent subject to practice on when taking on the wonderful world of BIF (Bird In Flight) shooting.


While walking along the track we managed to get a glimpse of something yellow, red, black and finchy and realized that we had a little community of European Goldfinches in the trees around us. They were less curious than the Cisticola, but managed to get enough of a picture to be able to claim it as a done deal.

On the way back towards the significantly more crowded end of Sydney I realized that I should take advantage of being accompanied by the most experienced Regent Honeyeater spotter that I know and soon after we found ourselves on good old Spinks Rd preparing to dive into the wilderness of Castlereagh NR. Well, well - got a few pictures - none of Regent HEs and will probably still need to visit Capertee valley .. how sad(?) ;-)