Sydney Olympic Park - Above And Below The Surface

Back in Sydney and we celebrated by going for a wander in Sydney Olympic Park with the boys - keen binocular slinging long time bloggers Iain and Jarrod. What a lovely way to spend a Sunday, we managed to clock up a good amount of kilometers while spotting wildlife, snapping photos and solving most of the troubles of the world.


Sydney Olympic Park always delivers - maybe not anything breathtakingly exotic - it is still in Sydney after all :-) but a good selection of fish, birds and insects, what more can you hope for? Also, as I argued in the latest Perth post, wildlife in parks is very photogenic, if you are after good wildlife close-up photos you are better off going to a busy park than into the wild.

Good stuff! Excellent company and a great day out, back to the car at the sneaky free car park at Triangular Pond - No Lewin's Rail this time around, but only little G. needed that one, so who cares? ;-)
Those of you who are still wondering what creature I caught in the first photo can see a half-"full body shot" of this underwater Juggernaut patrolling the waters of Sydney Olympic Park - I will suggest using tight tight speedos if you should want to go for a swim :-D

Rottnest Island - The Non-Feathered Land Critters

There is a good selection of land based non-feathered critters on Rottnest. The Quokka is probably the most famous inhabitant being directly responsible for the naming of the island. Dutch captain Willem de Vlamingh thought the quokkas looked like rats - I guess you did not need any biology degree to be put in charge of a flotilla in those days .. probably not today either(?) - Well, Vlamingh named the island "Rattenest" which is Dutch for "rat's nest" and over the years the name transformed into Rottnest.

The selection of reptiles on Rottnest is good, more importantly though is that your chance of seeing reptiles is excellent! The lack of dogs, cats and foxes and probably the fact that there is next to no traffic on the island has made the crawling inhabitants feel very safe. Particular in the afternoon they will happily present themselves out in the open, trying to suck the last bit of heat out of the tarmac road. So choosing to do a afternoon ride on your bike around the island can be most rewarding. Do not drive to close to the edge of the road and bring your camera :-)

Once again we managed to spot the local Bobtail subspecies called Tiliqua rugosa konowi, which is endemic to Rottnest Island. Also King's Skink Egernia kingii is a sure spot, I have never pulled out the lunch box at Cape Vlamingh (West End) without a specimen showing immediately afterwards :-)

We did not see any snakes this time around, but a great surprise was a line of Processionary Caterpillar, Ochrogaster lunifer, making their way across the road. Great way to prove that size matters :-) obviously they try to imitate a larger creature by forming a gap-less line, similar to how starlings seek protection in large flocks, "sort sol" and how striped catfish forms dense schools.


Excellent weather, some food heavy backpacks and time off - what more can you hope for? Out at Cape Vlamingh we were treated not only with the views of the Osprey family, but also with some hair raising performance by a couple of surfers in combo with helpers on two jet skis.


I have always though that it was cheating having a friend on a jet ski setting you up for the wave, but watching the battle against those waves at West End, I must admit that there was nothing looking like cheating there! Underwater reefs, massive surf and razor sharp rocks all along the coast - if it was me, I would have like a support vessel or two as well :-D

Twitching Mute Swan in Northam

Well, when you find yourself standing there in the middle of Northam at the Avon River with the camera drawn and little G. running around with binoculars it is very very hard not to admit that you are actually on a proper twitch. I am not talking about a muscles uncontrollable contraction and relaxation, but rather about the journey a keen birdwatchers initiate to see a specific (rare) bird - a twitch.

That specific bird in Northam is the Mute Swan. It is the only place in Australia were you can be sure to see this species breeding in a "wild" environment. Mute (or White) Swans were brought to WA in 1896 by the British, probably to ease some severe cases of homesickness .. A Russian settler and the Major of Northam decided that Northam, with the Avon river going through would be perfect for the swans and the swans agreed - somehow the Mute Swan never really established a proper foothold anywhere in Australia and the imported animals died without giving giving life to new offspring, except for Northam where today a thriving group of ca. 80 individuals patrol the waters.


Quite funny to see a road sign giving direction to where the bird you are after resides :-D No doubt that the swans are a very popular inhabitants and that they are well looked after - in a wild way ;-)


Having once again fulfilled our goals during the very first few minuets at the location, we easily had time for a stroll along the Avon River and a walk across the suspension bridge. It is a beautiful quiet area up there ca. 100km inland and my guess is that Northam sports some seriously hot summer days. We were there end of April more specifically on ANZAC day and lets just say that it was toasty! - Sorry for being terribly behind with this blog, but I am trying!

All good, I managed to catch a few flying object with the camera; some metallic ones in honor of ANZAC day and a more conventional feathered Yellow-billed Spoonbill. Half the day was gone and the next target should prove to be a lot harder - we were heading for Rufous Treecreeper habitat.

Short-billed Black-Cockatoos in The Hills East of Perth

Short-billed (White-tailed) Black-Cockatoo aka Carnaby's Black-Cockatoo is one of the endemic birds of Western Australia. It is not as difficult to find as its very similar Long-billed cousin (aka Baudin's Black-Cockatoo) and every time I have seen them, there has been a good size flock of them. This early morning in the hills east of Perth I was particular lucky spotting in total more than 50 cockatoos foraging the tree tops in small groups, giving very little attention to the shutter pressing, big smiling Dane running around down on the ground - What a great bird!


Conditions were absolutely fantastic, cold crisp morning air and since the birds did not mind me, I was free to walk around under the trees getting the best angle for the photos. Great start to a big day.

It is a peaceful place up in the hills away from all the shenanigans of the city, so peaceful that even the birds are more relaxed. I have seen Common Bronzewing many times, but usually I find them very difficult to approach without scaring them away. The male above, however, allowed me in close - who is watching who?

I have to include a kangaroo once and a while - at least for my international readers :-D and to remind myself of how different it is down under. I have lived down here for nearly 5 years and once and a while it is good to remember some of the things that stunned you when you arrived. I can reveal that Moreton bay fig and Australian White Ibis are on the list for a fresh off the plane Dane walking the Sydney parks.


After some excellent birding I decided to change to the macro lens and take a closer look. I am quite happy with the insect in flight shot above - if just the bee had turned around! ;-)

All good, great morning - temperature had started rising and it was looking like another warm day in WA, we were heading further inland for one of the most quirky ticks around: Mute Swan in Northam.

Daintree National Park - Into the Wild ... on Boardwalks :-)

Across the river and into the wild! Daintree National Park is something very special, outside Australia it is probably not as famous as Kakadu National Park or the Great Barrier Reef, but it is one of those places that you will do yourself a great favor by visiting!

Being on a super tight schedule only having 5 days in the far north, we had to take some brutal decisions when it came to decide how we would be spending time. So crossing the river early in the morning we already knew that we would only have 1 day in the rain forest so better get on with it! :-)

For the first time the constant rain was actually helping us out. The rivers north in the park had swelled during the last days of rain and made it four wheel drive only .. Not having shelled out the donuts for a proper river-crossing-capable rent-a-car we were left with a chunk of the Daintree National Park perfectly fit for a 1-2 day visit if you gave it a good go .. so we did! :-)

You can go to all the outlooks and enjoy the vistas and you can sit in your car and in awe see the raging river blocking the road in front, but the most fantastic thing we did during our one day in the Daintree was to dive into all that greenness - the forest up there is just so incredibly full of energy! You can nearly feel how things are growing around you; warm, wet and luxuriant vegetation.

It is quite appropriate to visit a rain forest during rain, you really get that feeling of how potent the forest is around you. It might have hurt our wildlife spotting efforts slightly, for the birds it would make sense to fly somewhere dry! We picked up a few good birds though, including the Wompoo Fruit-Dove in the picture above - what a great bird! I had contemplated a bit on how to setup the camera, all that water made it near impossible to change lenses while walking in the forest. I chose to go for the macro lens; 150mm is obviously a bit shorter than the reach of the Bigma (500mm), but in the dense dark forest you do not need the excessive reach and the f/2.8 of the macro comes in very very handy when under the foliage cover.

Great stuff - really great stuff - so great indeed that I have included a link here to the far north Queensland real estate :-) You definitely get more space for your $ than in Sydney .. it would not be the worst place to retire to one day when I get old .. in a few years - 3 in fact :-D

Surfs Up in Bondi - A Good Excuse For a Photowalk

Once again I teamed up with Yiing for a photowalk around Coogee. We had not really planned where to go, but with the sun shining and a generally quite fantastic day the vote took us north along the coast .. and there was something about a surf competition at Bondi.

As we got closer to Bondi we realized that the surf competition was indeed well and truly on and a few celebrity surfers had made their way to Bondi - including Kelly Slater.

Taking surf pictures is soooo rewarding and dare I say easy(?), at least compared to the struggle I normally have when trying to frame those birds - the surfers are where the waves are - simple as that! :-D Despite arriving late we probably ended up in a near perfect position up on the wall just south of the beach, where we had great views to the action on the water and the shenanigan on the beach.


Fantastic stuff! Great seeing an event like that and fun trying to shoot a very different type of pictures. However, it had taken us close to 2 hours walking to Bondi and "yes" we could probably do the return journey faster, but still it would take a while making it back to Coogee, so we decided to leave before the price ceremony.

On our way to Bondi, we had actually "practiced" taking surf pictures of a couple of surfers at Tamarama. I have included some of the pictures here, this particular day I guess the organizers would have been better off relocating the competition a beach further south, Tamarama was sporting some super good waves and the closeness of the break made it a pure joy to take pictures there.

Cape Banks with The Gang

Weather was not really good for snorkeling so the gang decided to use an early(?) Saturday morning down at Cape Banks for a healthy serve of coastal bushwalking spiced up with the chance of some pelagic action. To convince the boys to join I might have mentioned the possibility of bagging the resident Australian Hobby ... which obviously did not show!

Fantastic landscape down there and amazing that you can walk around for hours less than 3.5km from one of the busiest harbours in the southern end of the world and less than 6km from Sydney airport and have it all to yourself ... guess a bit of shabby weather increase your chances of solitude :-D


No Hobby and the shearwaters outside of binocular range meant that the Eastern Reef Egret above could proudly claim the "bird of the day"-title. But once again what really mattered was that we managed to drag our lazy bums of the couch (or out of bed) and put a bit of early Saturday excitement into a gray weekend :-)