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

A Long Day in Botany Bay NP - Part 3 - Insects and Wildflowers

My first insect in flight (IIF) photo :-) This little fly had a very curious behavior, it was flying about 10-20cm above the ground in a very intermittent way. Standing absolutely still examining the ground for about 2-4 seconds and then performing a quick move to a new spot reengaging into the surveillance mode. I do not know what it was searching for, but considering the massive (compared to body size) spear like protrusion, I just know that I would not like to be the target of its attention.

I cannot help getting sucked into macro photography! Still contemplating on how much return I can expect from an investment in some macro glass. Will it end up on the shelf, with me continuing shooting pseudo-macro with the Bigma or will I actually carry another (couple of) kilo(s) of glass around and use most of the time changing between lenses? :-)



Bull ants are very impressive fighters! Putting 3 kilo of camera equipment near them and they will stand on their back legs frantically trying to attack the intruder - put xx kg of Danish farm boy and they will in similar fashion do anything possible to spur an encounter.

If you know your bull ants well, you will actually be able to determine where you are from variation in the coloration of the bull ant chewing on your leg. They can be anywhere from all red to all black and as large as 40mm, in common though; they all have a nasty bite ;-)

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

A Long Day in Botany Bay NP - Part 1 - Reptiles

Had a big day down south last weekend, weather is improving fast and all kinds of wildlife is creeping out from under their rocks to take advantage of the sun - that included yours truly, who had managed to get out of bed and was pretty determined to make a day out of it in combo with the camera.


I did not see any new birds, despite of a rumored visit by a red knot, but there was heaps of other stuff going on including an impressive selection of reptiles. Identification of reptiles is significantly more difficult than for the birds, guess they are less mobile and hence more prone to the development of local characteristics. An excellent starting point though is the NPWS Atlas of NSW wildlife in combo with a reptile book or - even better - the internet. Utilizing those sources I risk one eye and claim the first two pictures above to be of a Jacky Lizard (Amphibolurus muricatus).

I used most of the day in the National park. Making my way to Boat Harbour in the western end of the park and following the coast all the way around to Cape Solander. Covering quite a few types of habitats.

One of the top spots for reptiles is just off the carpark - less than 100 meters down towards the water and follow the path to the right - water drains through this area keeping it moist and a number of big boulders provide protection for the inhabitants.

There are always some opportunistic predaceous birds hanging around though; ravens, magpies and kestrels, guess they would not be there if they were not lucky once and a while and the presence of a few surprisingly short lizards seems to suggest that indeed it is a dangerous job being a lizard.

Have had a hard time identifying the skink above, best guess is some type of Garden or Grass Skink (Lampropholis delicata or L. guichenoti) The wildlife atlas does indeed suggest that there is another type of Lampropholis running around in Botany Bay NP. The big colorful one in the picture below looks very much like a Eastern Water-skink (Eulamprus quoyii), but as with all of the "guesses" suggestions are very welcome. :-)

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 ;-)