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

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. :-)

Botany Bay - Boat Harbour - All Alone :-)

I had some seriously busy months up towards Christmas - Do not misunderstand me, it was great busyness. Little G. moved back in, dad and TK visited and we managed to squeeze in some seriously super duper trips. Good stuff, but it there is an end to everything and suddenly I was once again all alone .. different, but not all bad :-)

Boat Harbour is not necessarily the place you bring people visiting from overseas, but if you are into a bit of wader action it is an excellent spot to go this time of year. The first picture is nearly a classic by now - I always take a "close up" of the city when standing at Quibray Bay viewing platform .. Centerpoint aka Sydney Tower is according to Google Earth 18km away from the platform :-)

Waders are fantastically camouflaged, looking at the pictures this might seem hard to believe, but trust me on this one, you can easily walk around on the rock seeing absolutely nothing, but cormorants, terns and seagulls - nothing else, that is until you sit down still and start focusing on the small pools of trapped water right at the edge of the rocks and suddenly there is life all over the place.


The bird above and also in the second picture had me fired up for a while, I was nearly sure that I had not seen it before. After a look in the books, however, I am afraid that it could be a non-breeding Pacific Golden Plover - the change their "outfit" quite dramatically when breeding. In combo with the camouflage story above it all give sense, they stay hidden most of the year, but have to break cover during breeding season to attract the opposite sex.


Walking back towards the car I saw a glimpse of something I have never seen around Sydney before; dolphins! I have seen them in Queensland and Western Australia, but never home here in Sydney. I ran up the sand dune only to be immensely disappointed instead of dolphins there was a group of about 5 surfers.

Standing there feeling a bit stupid having mistaken a surfer for a dolphin, the surfers (and yours truly to a minor extent) got themselves a bit of a surprise. A group of about 5 dolphins leapt out of the water few meters from the surfers and continued swimming close to the surface in between the people in the water.

All good, maybe no new birds but when the dolphins start jumping around it does not really matter so much :-) By the way, if any wader experts are reading along can you confirm if my mystery bird is indeed the PGP? If you really want to make my day, then tell me that it is the Eurasian Golden Plover ;-)

Quibray Bay Viewing Platform, Boat Harbour and Botany Bay National Park

Yet again we pointed the shiny bonnet of the Magna south and drove towards the south end of Botany Bay National park. Despite being only something like 10 kilometers south of Coogee (in a straight line) the habitat is apparently still sufficiently non-Coogee-like to ensure a very different selection of wildlife.

Made the usual stop at Quibray Bay viewing platform where we finally got decent views of a Whimbrel, - I have not seen that one before - accompanied by some Godwits and a Eastern Curlew. After a few seconds of celebration we got our act together and headed towards Boat Harbour. The walk out towards the rock platform was as always super good for spotting various reptiles.


But bird-wise it was very disappointing .. apart from a wind blown crowd of Crested Terns and some Cormorants we saw no feathered wildlife at all.

Instead we decided to push towards the Eastern end of the park, towards the Cape Baily Lighthouse. During my previous walks in the park this area has often given some great sightings and we were also in for a little treat this time. Sitting overlooking the ocean we suddenly noticed a White-bellied Sea-eagle approaching. WBSEs are normally quite good at keeping a distance, humans have not always treated the big predators of the sky with the respect they deserve and hence it is not straight forward to get a good close-up photo of a flying eagle.

This time, however, luck was on our side: An angry raven decided to try to scare the high cruising eagle away. The surprised WBSE desperately needing speed to outrun the aggressive attack did the only think possible and went into a steep dive, taking it straight above our heads and well and truly into range of the Bigma :-) Not bad at all, managed to get a few good ones of some quite spectacular nature.

A Long Day in Botany Bay NP - Part 4 - Landscape

Apart from reptiles, birds, insects and wildflowers there is also the landscape worth having a look at down around Botany Bay. Brown cliffs in combo with some green bush, add some high blue sky and some dark blue ocean and it is hard not to get some pleasing pictures :-)

The only activity where Botany Bay has ever let us down was probably during the infamous fish-less snorkel trip. Every time I look at the waters around Boat Harbour I get in doubt, can it be true that such crystal clear inviting looking water does not hold any fish? The army of fishermen and spearfishers always present seems to suggest otherwise - or could it be ...?

Well, well - no more Botany Bay for a while, I (nearly) promise! :-) have probably pushed it a bit by making it into 4 parts, but hey, it has been a windy weekend and I had to do some computer stuff anyway. I have attached a link to the Picasa album below, there is a few extra pictures that did not make it to the blog.

Boat Harbour + Botany Bay NP