Birding With The Pros - Pitt Town Lagoon and Sheyville National Park

Full and contented from a surprisingly good lunch we made the short drive to good old Pitt Town Lagoon eager to see if once again this little gem of a bird spot would deliver.

Weather had changed! Clouds had come in and covered the scorching sun, which was nice, but making our way down to the Lagoon was like walking into a steam sauna, humidity was approaching 100% and temperature had not yet dropped - well, we were not there to enjoy(?) and you cannot die from sweating(?) .. so we dived in ;-)

At first it all seemed a bit difficult, the Australian part of the company was not to happy about the never ending bashing through tall grass in the vicinity of water - absolutely prime snake territory - and trying to alert the snakes of our little party passing through probably had the same effect on all wildlife including the birds - what to do?

Slowing down and letting things happen around you is often the way to go and suddenly from nowhere was a little family of about 6 beautifully colored finch sized birds jumping around in the tall grass: Chestnut-breasted Mannikin - I have never seen them before :-)

During our exploration around the Lagoon we managed to a get close to a good selection of waders, however, the target species were not "home". Instead we had another surprise encounter with a (different?) Cuckoo. Unfortunately the pictures are not good enough for the blog, small bird in a tree 100 meters away is not "publishable" here. Instead I have included a link to some of the pictures from the trip down at the end of this post and invite anyone interested to take a look and chip in with comments on the Cuckoo in picture 18 and 19.

Apart from the excitement that comes along with being lost we were getting a bit birded out when exploring around in Sheyville National Park. Some Brown-headed Honeyeater and an unidentified Swift should have been photographic highlights - that could potentially have happened if I had changed to the much less light-hungry macro lens, instead of holding onto the reach of the bigma .. at least, such a swap would have allowed me to do a "proper" macro of the semi-macro fly photos you will have to content yourselves with.
All in all a great trip! Fantastic company and Pitt town and Bushell's Lagoons are always worth a visit. Indeed it could be argued that it would be sad to see everything in one go, since it would severely increase the activation barrier for going on the next trip :-) One would have to do something as stupid as starting up a year-list or similar madness to solve such "problems" :-D

Birding Road Trip

Pitt Town and Bushell's Lagoon - Again with an American twist

Some of you might remember the action-packed triple feature Sunday Lagoon bonanza previously described here at this site, where the Sintic and yours truly combined forces and managed to cover most of the birding hotspots of the north-western end of Sydney in only one day.

The American ticking machine had read both the Pitt Town and Bushell's Lagoon posts and demanded to be taken there already on her second day in Sydney .. impressive speed of the little American tornado :-) I was easily convinced due to the lack of Pink-eared Ducks at our last visit and there was always the chance of the Bittern :-)


No Bittern, but we sorted out the Pink-eared Duck and saw a few Australian Shovelers, tick-tick! :-) Also, my companion managed to finish of the Ibises, indeed we saw all three during the trip including the Glossy.

Bushell's lagoon proved less vibrant than it had been on my previous trip. However, there are always good opportunities of a bit of BIF photography and a group of nine Goldfinches was in charge of the entertainment, only interrupted by yet another Black-shouldered Kite flying back and forth, seems they are all over the place at the moment! How many do you have to see, before you claim one of them as a Letter-winged equivalent? ;-)

Pitt Town Lagoon - A Mini Road Trip with The Sintic

Early Saturday morning I fired up the Magna and headed towards the north-west end of Sydney together with a very upbeat Sintic. Not only did my companion manage to direct us through the streets of Sydney so fast and smooth that anyone wanting to better the performance will need the tightest-tight full-suit Arena, but before we passed the Blacktown exit, we had talked about Pink-eared Ducks, solved the economical meltdown and briefly dealt with most other things in between :-)


Always wondered why it was called the Fan-tailed C. :-)

Pitt Town Lagoon has received a bit of interest lately, hordes of Pink-eared Ducks have, according to the internet, chosen the lagoon as their winter hideout, with the added excitement of (minimum) one Australasian Bittern reported to have been flushed multiple times in combo with some excellent Sydney winter weather we were up for a treat :-)

Great spot, lots of excellent wildlife - unfortunately the Bittern was tired of being flushed and the Pink-eared Ducks were either taking a little rest from all excitement in a neighboring pond or they had collectively decided to hide their pink bits. However, there was still quite a bit of stuff going on when it comes to man and beast,

Paul found a horse dressed in matching blue - probably the color of this winter! And we meet a few celebrity birders, including the Shasha and Amoore duo, good to know that they did not find the Bittern either ;-) Had a little chat and decided to move on. We all went to a neighboring national park for a little walk, the newly-weds had to leave early though, something about a trip to Brazil ..? - guess young couples nowadays are not shy of taking a second honeymoon :-)

The ticking machine Sintic and yours truly had bigger(?) plans though, we were going to visit the Bushell's Lagoon, just around the corner ...