My Nature Blog
During the school term, it can be hard to arrange to hang out with Sethy sometimes as it depends on both my health and other commitments. On school holidays, it is so much easier. Just find a day where it is sunny.
During our November visit, I fell in love with a brolga chick and promised myself that I’d return to watch it grow. I didn’t have the money to get out there before now and boy, had it grown!
I’m just going to use dates rather then come up with creative titles for my Balyang visits. I’m just there so darn much. Fortunately, I’ll probably only be visiting for another couple of weeks. I’ll still continue to go to mums and explore the Barwon, just not as the pace I’ve been currently doing.
This current birding project has actually been incredibly exhausting!
Anyway, I was photographing these cockatoos below because I thought the increased number of birds meant I had a better chance of getting a poop shot. I didn’t notice until later that one of them had fruit in its mouth!
I got these generic house sparrow shots while waiting for it to do something else. I’ve learned from experience that they don’t give any warning beforehand! It is an interesting challenge, trying to get lovely photos of them.
There was a lot of young people feeding bread to the birds there, which was annoying. I’m too shy to say anything at this point.
This swamphen saw a silver gull land with a large piece of bread and decided that it wanted some! 🙂 It kinda looks like a dinosaur here.
These long billed corellas were grooming each other and then had a nap. Not from a great angle, but that was because I was lying down on the ground photographing lorikeets.
I nearly got shat on several times while trying to get photos of lorikeets doing the same thing. I had a couple of near misses when trying to get the shots.
I spent ages just watching about 10 of them fly around above me. I got to get a very close look at the colours of their tail. I probably shouldn’t dismiss them as a photographic subject so quickly.
Finally, the red wattlebirds are still working hard feeding their chicks. They have been a consistent background call for the past 6 weeks or so.
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As mentioned, it has been an exhausting month. At least 10k+ photos taken at this one location, all of which is painstakingly documented. I definitely wont be doing it again next year. However I’ve learned so much. I’ve got so many questions to seek answers for, which I’ll be doing when things slow down. I can start working on guides for certain birdwatching locations.
It has also taught me so much about managing anxiety and birding with patience. I’ll definitely be writing more about that late.
Last Sunday, Sethy and I went to Balyang after our visit to Eastern Beach. The main goal of the trip was to see if there was enough interesting behaviour to justify Glenn travelling an hour to photograph birds. I quickly learned that no, there wasn’t. The nesting behaviour I saw last time was a fluke and we would be better off going to an environment with a larger concentration of birds. Seth and I still had fun, though
This is what remains from the heron nest from last year. I do want to return and see if a heron nests here this season.
Swamphen.
Cute darter flying away. The following images are all of pardalotes. Sethy found these in a tree, based on the last visit. Last time, I took a photo of a little bird in a tree and dismissed it as a thornbill. It was dark, rainy and I didn’t really care. Later, I looked at the photos and lightened the image. Sethy and I worked out that we had actually seen a spotted pardalote, which was a lifer for him. The main difference, for us, was the tail was shorter. He was so stoked. It really made me think about how many birds I had dismissed in the past that may had been something else. I didn’t really care about them before but these guys changed me mind. They were quite low down and easy to see. They let us get really close views from all angles. I think they were eating the leaves of something on the leaves. Possibly lerps?
Cute fungi
Spider underneath a possum guard.
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I don’t know how often pardalotes are at Balyang. It could be seasonal. Or, they could be in the lower branches because it’s nearly nesting time. It’s certainly something to research. I’ve never noticed them before because they aren’t as visible as some of the other birds.
All the ducks there at the moment are boring. Oh! And there was wedding photography being done here during our visit. There may have been a dog wearing the top half of a tuxedo.
This trip took place on 6 july
I’m a little bit late in writing this post. It has been a busy couple of weeks and I still don’t have the internet connected here yet! I’m hijacking the internet connection via Glenns phone at the moment, so all the posts from today will be a tad rushed.
I had spent the weekend at mums. I’d promised Sethy and adventure but the weather had been bad, plus I wanted to get back to the house in time to look for owls with Carolyn. I told Sethy we’d go down there on the Monday. It turned out, we got there just in time for some decent rain. It was still a blast though.
You see, we observed some nesting behaviour from the crows and the cockatoos. The cockatoos were flying from hollow to hollow. They were biting off bits of back around the hollow and then scooping up and chucking out the shavings. Two rainbow lorikeets ended up scaring them away from here so I don’t know if they will use this hollow.
The other behaviour was the crows collecting twigs for their nest. Two of them were doing it. They would break sticks off trees and find ones on the ground. Break them up into smaller pieces to make the nest. I don’t know if they ended up using any stuff from the herons nest from last year.
Below are the relevant photos, as well as pictures of a pretty swamphen. Sorry for the lack of explanation, I will be doing more research about nests.
Today was the nephews first day of school. I try to keep most of my nephews life private, but this is relevant to the story. We try to encourage good behaviour with what we’ve named ‘adventures,’ This is mostly me taking him for a walk somewhere but often has a birding element. Today, we promised that we’d go to the wetlands after school. And, Nan would come too!
At 2pm this afternoon we were in the bird hide at Jerringot. Fortunately there were no drunks in there, but someone had made a fire outside of the hide and left multiple beer cans there.
One of the first birds we saw there was this little egret. Seth was so excited, it was nans first time she had seen that bird. I don’t think I’ve seen one there before, it’s usually just great egrets. I may be wrong with the ID.
There wasn’t much else in the area in front of the hide which was disappointing. Many birders have reported seeing crakes and rails in their local wetlands. I don’t think the water at Jerringot is quite low enough yet. It’s meant to be awesome for Ballions crake. I don’t know if the birds have changed their habits. I don’t know whether I should look elsewhere for them. It’s incredibly confusing.
I decided we should walk along the side and back to see what was around. I’d also read that rails love crossing that path.
Meh!
However, we did see several black winged stilts in the area opposite us. They weren’t pleased about us being there and quickly flew off.
Nan also ‘saw’ her first Lathams snipe. She’s visually impaired and snipes are difficult to see at the best of times, so that may be a bit of an overstatement. But Seth really loved sharing his hobby with nan.
After this, we got a bit distracted looking for rabbits.
In the back area we saw 3 spoonbills and a couple of ibises. We flushed more snipes and stilts by accident. We walked back along the path and Seth pointed out ducklings in the adjoining pond
I don’t know how that kid does it. He always sees stuff that I miss! At first I thought he was joking because they were that well hidden. The mister is really skilled when it comes to birding.
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It was a good twitch. Seth really appreciated being able to share it with his nan. Even better, she is knowledgeable about a lot of native plants. Seth will often ask me questions about things and I’m honest about my lack of knowledge in that area. He loves learning and he loves nature. It sounds silly, but it feels like it has a healing effect on him.
I’m getting a bit exhausted with the constant birding. Everything is a gazillion times harder with a little dude around. Packing extra, slowing down and resting more.
Yet I’m doing considerably more birding then I would be otherwise. I don’t have much money to go further afield. It’s helping with my agoraphobia. I think I’m mostly antsy to return to the wet rainforest 🙂 Or find a bloody shrike tit.
Planning to slow down slightly but also go further afield if we can. Need to see how we can involve his nan.
Now, this tired aunty needs some sleep.
