Report and photos of my trip to Australia

Happy New Year to everyone on the forums and thank you to those of you kind enough to send me Christmas wishes whilst I was away in Australia for four weeks.  Some of you have been kind enough to say you would be interested in seeing a report and photographs of my trip so here goes. 

 The main reason for the holiday was to visit my sister and her family but of course I packed my camera, bins and field guide and made sure to fit in some bird watching too.  I took thousands of photos as you can imagine!

 We spent three weeks with my sister, two of which were in Melbourne and we saw some lovely birds as there were lots of trees in the suburbs, in particular beautiful flowering gum trees. We saw rainbow lorikeets, musk lorikeets, galahs, Australian magpies, which look more like our crows except that they are black and white, common mynas, masked lapwings, a grey butcherbird and sulphur-crested cockatoos.

Musk Lorikeet

Sulphur-crested Cockatoo

Just ten minutes walk from my sister’s house was a lake and area of reedbeds called Bushy Park Wetlands.  It is a fairly small reserve but has a hide and we paid several visits and saw dusky moorhens, wood ducks, black pacific ducks, chestnut teal, a pelican, a family of purple swamphens and several welcome swallows.

Purple Swamphen 

Black Pacific Duck

Chestnut Teal

We also went into the city and paid a visit to the botanical gardens where we saw black swans, magpie- larks, little wattlebirds and a bassian thrush.  Some of you know that I am a bat warden and I was disappointed to discover that the fruit bat colony is no longer in the gardens.  The colony has been relocated due to the bats causing damage to the trees.  One evening my brother-in-law announced that we were going out and very kindly took us to Yarra Bend Park to see the bats at their new location and watch them go off hunting at dusk.  It was brilliant! Special thanks to my long suffering sister, her husband and my OH of course.

Black Swan

Magpie-Lark

One day we took a ride on the steam train, ‘Puffing Billy’, a restored railway between Belgrave and Gembrook in the Dandenong Ranges.  There is a nature reserve in Gembrook and though we didn’t have very long before the return train we managed a short walk and saw brown scrubwrens and a pair of eastern yellow robins.  Very pretty birds.

Eastern Yellow Robin

Another day we took a boat  trip in Port Phillip Bay and saw bottlenose dolphins, fur seals and a colony of gannets.  There were adults, juveniles and fluffy babies and it was great to observe them at close hand.  We also saw pied cormorants and pacific gulls.

Gannets

Little Pied Cormorant

On Boxing day we went to Halls Gap in the Grampian Mountains for a week.  We stayed in a wooden cabin set amongst gum trees and within minutes of arriving several laughing kookaburras welcomed us by setting up a tremendous racket!  There were some in the trees, some on a fallen log where youngsters were squabbling over a dead lizard and one sitting on the railing of the veranda.  Perhaps it had come to check out the new residents!  Though we didn’t feed the birds, we did keep the two birdbaths filled and were rewarded with visits from the kookaburras which seemed to enjoy regular baths and were very amusing to watch and also scarlet rosellas, red wattlebirds, sulphur crested cockatoos, a bronzewing and several magpies all of which come to drink or bathe but not with such abandon as the kookaburras.  We could watch all of this from the rear veranda whilst enjoying a nice cold beer or two!  Every morning after our barbeque breakfast the magpies could be seen hopping about on the hot plates looking for scraps.  They must have feet made of asbestos!  We also had visits from kangaroos which grazed or lolled in the shade just twenty feet from the cabin and up in the bush behind the cabin OH was very excited to discover two echidnas.  He sat on a rock for ages trying to photograph them but they are very shy creatures and quickly burrowed under the soil or hid among the rocks if approached so he didn’t have much luck.  It  was good to have had a brief glimpse of  them though.  In previous years there had been koalas at Halls Gap but sadly we didn’t see any.  During a walk to the town for dinner one evening we saw a pair a gang gang cockatoos stripping berries from a hawthorn tree, a group of long-billed cockatoos strutting about like lads out on the town, a pied currawong, a crested pigeon (which OH and I dubbed a punk pigeon) and several superb fairy wrens.  These are gorgeous little birds but they are very tiny and unfortunately they never stay still so photographing them is extremely difficult. My best shot was taken when the light was fading so the image is not sharp but I was pleased to have got it at all!

 Bang Bang Cockatoo

Laughing Kookaburra

Common Bronzewing

Scarlet Rosella

Superb Fairy Wren

Whilst in the Grampians we visited MacKenzie Falls and  Silverband Falls where I saw a silvereye and a brown thornbill.  We also visited Mount William, a gold-mining town called Stawell and a super lavender farm near Daylesford called Lavandula Swiss Italian Lavender Farm.  Here we saw a white-browed scrubwren and some more superb fairy wrens.  I could never tire of seeing these lovely and aptly named little birds.  I will post some photos in the galleries as this post is already very long!

We had such a super time in the Grampians that it was difficult to tear ourselves away to return to the city but return we did.

The final week of our holiday was spent in Sydney, a very interesting city and we did the rounds of all the famous places such as the opera house, the harbour and it’s famous bridge, Botany Bay, Bondi Beach and Manley where we saw lots of silver gulls riding the sea breezes above the heads of the tourists and keeping an eye out for any unguarded picnics!  We visited the botanical gardens in the city and I was delighted to find that the fruit bats were still there.  (Sorry - I know I’m batty!)  The authorities are considering a re-location though as the bats are causing damage to the trees, as they had in Melbourne.  We also saw several black-headed ibis and some sulphur-crested cockatoos in a city park.  Our host complained that these city dwelling ‘cockies’ are scavengers and they cause damage in suburban gardens.  One evening he took us to see his veggie patch and we caught a cocky red-handed, well, red-beaked anyway.  It was sitting on the fence with one of his corn cobs in its beak.  I swear it looked guilty as it suddenly dropped the cob and flew off! 

Silver Gull

"Cocky" (Sulphur-Crested Cockatoo)

The final morning as we were loading the suitcases in the car we had a real treat as a little family of three rainbow lorikeets appeared in the garden.  Our host quickly rustled up some food for them and we were able to feed them and take lots of photos.  A fantastic end to our holiday.

Rainbor Lorikeet

Juvenile Rainbow Lorikeet

After four wonderful weeks in the Aussie sunshine we returned home to chilly Wiltshire and I wasn’t sorry to have missed all the snow.  Our son had kept the feeders topped up and I was pleased to see that my birds haven’t deserted me.  Hopefully they will be much in evidence at the weekend when I take part in the Big Garden Birdwatch.

Best wishes,

 SB