Gundabooka National Park - Road Trip with Danish Visitors - Part 3

Summit day! Not too bad using a day off climbing an outback mountain. I had done it before and I can promise that I would love to do it again. After a great nights sleep we got up, had some porridge, filled the water bottles and the fresh-of-the-plane Danes had to use some time getting their virgin skin covered in a protective layer of sunscreen. While all that rubbing was going on, I gave a little 101 on how to walk in the bush, what species of animals we were likely to encounter and that we would not see. I used quite a bit of energy explaining that we would not(!) encounter snakes and therefore we very perfectly safe walking through high grass and scrubby bush. I think, I even managed to state that seeing a snake under these conditions would be as lucky as winner the big one in Lotto .. after approximately 100 meters of walking the little fella below tried to cross the path in front of us. According to my previous statement it could obviously not be a snake - that would be too lucky - so I mentioned that there was a good chance of it being a legless lizard ... having had a bit of time looking at photos and a visit to the the website for the Atlas of NSW Wildlife, I must admit that Gundabooka is inhabited by two types of snakes with black heads, the Monk Snake and the Mallee Black-headed snake, my best guess is that our little friend is a juvenile of the latter. Crossing the scrubby flats is warm and tedious work, but the reward is well worth it, as soon as the landscape start rising the bushes and trees disappear and you start climbing Mount Gundabooka. There is no well defined path to follow and if you get to eager and try to gain high too fast, you are likely to be find yourself stuck in a dead end having to backtrack, but as long as you take it easy and just follow the flow of the landscape it is an easy climb. Taking your time on the way up gives you the possibility of observing how plants, insects and animals change as you leave the grassland below and get some rock under food. The views change as well! What a lovely way to spend time with some good friends! Sitting on a big rock in the middle of nothing, with wood swallows circling around you, skinks curiously peaking out from their small caves and a wedge-tailed eagle hovering high above trying to spot dinner or just out stretching its wings. The raw landscape of Gundabooka national park and the views from the mountain makes it one of my absolute favorite national parks in Australia. If you live in Sydney and have visitors flying in, that are willing to (and capable of) doing a good hike/climb, I think Gundabooka is their best chance of getting a feel of what the Australian outback is about .. unless you splash out and fly.

Gundabooka National Park - Road Trip with Danish Visitors - Part 2

Next stop was Gundabooka National Park, one of my absolute favorite national parks in NSW. Back in 2009 I visited a very dry Gundabooka with the Amoores and was immensely impressed; 1,2,3,4. In 2010 I had planned to visit again during my drive north to Bowra station, but Gundabooka was flooded by torrential rain and I could not enter! This time around I had heard that the Bourke region had had a fair amount of rain and I was looking forward to see a much greener desert. Gundabooka is far enough inland to have the feel of proper outback and still it is reachable from Sydney within a good solid day of driving, or as we did, easily reached from Capertee Valley with some of the day to spare. The Australian outback did indeed given us a very rare display of lush green colors and a feel of life that I have never seen as strong before. Despite of us doing our journey midday we managed to see lots of wildlife along the road, indeed it got a bit of stressful with hordes of goats being attracted to the green grass growing along the road and not showing great respect to the traffic rules. I ended up sitting with a food ready on the break and no time to see what type of woodswallows it was darting around up above the treetops. Soon after leaving the bitumen we got ourselves the first great nature sighting - A Varanus Gouldii walked across the road in front of us, with as little respect for traffic laws as the goats had displayed. What a great spot! Great to show my Danish companions a good size proper reptile and good for me to see a monitor that was not a Varanus Various. Red dust all over, some scrubby mulga and mulga ants - Dry Tank camping ground always delivers :-) I had been very careful in keeping this trip pretty luxurious, I had even chosen a campsite sporting a bush toilet, since I was not aware of how accustomed my companions were to camping life. Clearly my efforts were recognized and appreciated ... The cheers would hardly stop after we realized how exceptional good an insect (and insect eating creatures) selection there was to find in the little shed, one of us was so concerned about the well being of the inhabitants that he straight away proclaimed that he would rather die than use the little room ... what a noble way of trying to avoid stressing those small insects! :-) - I am sure the Gehyra variegata Tree Dtella below appreciated the privacy.

Capertee Valley - Road Trip with Danish Visitors - Part 1

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 :-)

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 to Denmark, 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 the whitest 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

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

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.