Rainbow Lorikeet

Two Tree Island Lagoon - Sunrise

High tide and sun rise coincided this morning so I went to see what birds were in Two Tree Island Lagoon. There were an awful lot of Black Tailed Godwit (2000+) and Oyster Catcher (around 500). There were 4 Sandwich Tern and among the Common Tern there were 2 very young birds being fed by their parents. Elsewhere on the West end of Two Tree there was a sizeable gathering of passerines including Willow Warblers, Whitethroats, Lesser Whitethroat, Goldfinch, Greenfinch, Blue Tits and a Great Tit. The Willow Warblers were yellowy younguns and looked great feeding off the yellow fennel flowers. Unfortunately I didn't manage to get a photo of that so here's a photo of the lagoon as the sun came up....

(For some reason I'm unable to upload photos at the moment so please click the links below if you'd like to see them.....)
willow warbler
Two Tree Lagoon

Wasp Spiders

There are lots of Grass Hoppers at Star Lane Pits. Wasp Spiders cast their webs in the dry grass close to the ground to catch them. I saw 3 spiders today, all within 1 meter of each other.

Eastern Bristlebirds, Jervis Bay

The birthday girl and I went to Jervis Bay (NSW) this weekend.

There were plenty of good wildlife encounters but the highlight was undoubtedly watching five Eastern Brislebirds and an Echidna crossing the road during an hour's stake-out up near the Cape St. George Lighthouse. Record shot below.


Eastern Bristlebird

Tawny Crowned Honeyeaters

Spotted Pardalote

White-bellied Sea-Eagle

Fur Seal?

Other moments were: my first Hoary-headed Grebes with six on the Botanic Gardens lake; a confident Brown Quail leading us up to the Lighthouse with five more wondering around the Jervis Bay convenience store; Eight White bellied Sea Eagles at Steamers Beach; my first Swamp Harrier; two Sooty Oystercatcher; close views of Peregrine and Whistling Kite (and Little Penguin remains) at Cave beach; my first two pairs of Tawny-crowned Honeyeaters; a pair of Spotted Pardalote nest building; a Fur Seal (i think) playing with a cuttlefish; a couple of Rock Wallabies; and, bizarrely, a ginger Guinea Pig crept out of the heath while we were looking for Ground Parrots.

The lowlight was breaking my scope (dropped) and camera (sand) in the space of a couple of hours. Might be the last photos from me for a while.


Brown Quails with broken camera