Lyrebirds and Shorebirds

After yesterday's exhausting activities we felt like a bludge this morning so drove to the halfway mark into town, parked and walked the second half of the walk.  The excitement started with seeing 2 Azure Kingfishers at the town end of the lagoon loop.  Unfortunately they were very active so no photo is available.

Getting to the start of the Shady Gully Boardwalk Frances spotted a male Superb Lyrebird digging in the litter beside the road.  It was very accommodating and we got within 10m of it.  This is the best of my photographs.
After getting nearly back "home" Frances spotted another Lyrebird on a track at the foot of Mt Karbeethong (or as it is officially known Karbeethong Avenue).  I took some photos but think this one, taken later when I walked back down, is better.
The reason I went back was to try to get some better photos of the remaining bats.  I think I succeeded.  A clump shot.
 This is my favourite: cropped from a larger image.
I went to peer at the shoreline opposite the bat-camp and found it well populated with Pelicans and Teal.
 Male Chestnut Teal.
The next three images are included to illustrate the weird looks that the Pelicans can achieve.  And the nice photos that are coming from my new camera.


Our second walk for the day was along the Betka River and Fisherman's Point elements of the Mallacoota Coastal Walk.  This is a pleasant walk with a variety of vegetation and views.  On the clifftop bit the views are better than the birds as much of it is though Meleleuca forest with no understorey and few birds.  It was a bit windy today so in addition to there not being many birds the squeaks of the trees rubbing together kept sounding like strange calls.  The best bird seen was two Australian Gannets .

After a nanna-nap I went out to Captain Stephensons Point (effectively the opposite view to that obtained from Bastion Point).  The first two images show how much sand is visible in the rain-deprived Inlet.

The remaining photos were taken on my phone, linked to my telescope.  The limiting factor in this process is the capability of the phone with the telescope on full zoom at 60x magnification.  So the snaps are not exactly "crisp" but do I think serve to illustrate the species they are meant to.  The first is 4 Red Knots (with a couple of very red ones) and 2 Bar-tailed Godwits.
Two Eastern Curlew were also browsing.
A selection of Crested Terns and Silver Gulls (fair number (~40 of each) but a lot less than seen yesterday.
 A Caspian Tern terned (sic) up to offer a comparison with a Crested Tern  ....
 .. and a Bar-tailed Godwit.
Given that the doomsayers are always predicting terrible things for Oystercatchers it was pleasing that my count of that species was 43.  A flyover by a White-breasted Sea-Eagle caused much angst among the waders which was particularly annoying as I was just trying to read the leg Flag on one of the Oystercatchers when it took off and landed somewhere I couldn't relocate it.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Insects from pine trees

Image
This afternoon (13/1/2015) we were looking out of our sunroom and noticed a strange bit of mist.  On getting my binoculars on the case I found it to be a cloud of tens of thousand of insects.  They appeared with naked eye to be flying away, but with binoculars I thought they were circling. Here are some images In the second one it may be possible to see there are two streams coming from the top of each tree. There was a loud buzzing noise but that could just be several thousand wings. Earlier in the day Frances had been to some nearby willows and they were infested with many little black soft bodied insects.  Perhaps they shifted to the pines and were swarming? Help!! Any information welcome. A colleague, from Wamboin, had noticed a similat phenomenon, but involvng eucalypts rather than pines!  Here are the photos he took with his phone. I have consulted some expert friends.   Their responses were: I would have gone for chironomids. I rec...
Read more

A tour of the West (part 1)

Image
A friend from my time in the UN sent me some photos of her family trip along Route 66.  They did this is a large camperwagon rather than a Chevy Corvette (apparently the kids jacked up about being offered a trip in the trunk).  It seems to have been a very good trip for them and most interesting to see their photos.  It was also educational for me, as I found out the German for rocking chair (schaukelstuhl, since you ask). They did 7200 miles in 30 days - a pretty serious bit of distance. This made me think of the trips we did in 1981 when living in Denver.  Frances initiated that idea by getting a book about the National Parks of the West  and marking interesting places.  I then worked out a route on a Rand-McNally Road Atlas (GPS was unknown then  - as were iPhones, personal computers and the internet).  From memory, taking nearly the whole Summer school holidays we covered about 10,000 miles in 70 days.  Here, approximately,  are ...
Read more

Maslins beach rules

Image
Anyone who was in Adelaide in the 1970s will be having a good nudge nudge at that title.  However the beach is really nice even though it is the haunt (in Summer ) of naked people.  (As an aside one of the 'van park staff was talking to some other guests and commented that the sights on the beach in Summer were not at all exciting.)  In April it is the haunt of seniors, many of them exercising their dogs, and thus a far more attractive place. Getting to the beach was a walk of about 1km along roads, from our van.  The second half of this went past a rather daggy looking paddock with many formed ridges in it, as though it was irrigated, although a water sources wasn't evident.  The paddock got interesting towards the end as some green parrots appeared.  Thanks to Frances eye for detail we have subsequently identified these as Elegant Parrots: my first lifer for 2014.    The locale is indicated by the red lines in this mudmap: Here are the bird...
Read more