Australia Trip Report

In September 2013 I had cause to head down under for a close friends wedding. I of course grasped the opportunity, to both celebrate the occasion and soak up the best birding Greater Sydney had to offer!

The relatively short timescale of my visit, jet lag, revelry and the beauty of the local wildlife gives all my memories of Australia a hazy dream-like quality.

In advance of my southern hemisphere debut I managed to create a slightly obsessive Australian birds wall chart, cutting out pages from old bird books and prints outs from the internet! This gave me a leader on the species I would encounter. It didn’t dampen my delight when I saw my first lorakeets and kookaburra mind – they were much better in the flesh!

An acclimatisation walk on my arrival amassed twenty common species including; Pacific Black Duck, Swamphens, Lorikeets, Cockatoos and even a flyover White-bellied Sea Eagle.

Once I was installed on the northern beaches I applied the same approach I have at home – walking good habitat and seeing what I could find. The honey pot near my accommodation was North Head and specifically the habitat just above Shelly Beach. This comprised excellent coastal scrub and also a vantage over the Tasman Sea from Bower Street viewpoint.

A tour of the scrub achieved my first White-browed Scrubwren and Grey Fantail of the trip. Offshore I also saw my first albatross, a Black-browed Albatross looking ultra magnificent as it sheared over waves of the Tasman, on just my second day in the southern hemisphere!

My first couple of days offered a good spread of some thirty suburban and coastal species, this did little to prepare me for the deluge of awesome I would experience on the third day. Tuesday 10th September 2013 - when I truly arrived in Australia; under the expert tutelage of Sir Barry Lancaster.

In preparing for the trip I Googled amongst other things ‘bird watching Sydney’ on the first page returned linked to the birdingpal website and specifically Barry’s contact details. I hadn’t come across the birdingpal site before, it connects bird watchers from around the globe – to do a days birding free of charge!

I suppose the success of birdingpal relies upon the quality of the pal you connect with; luckily I hit the jackpot with Barry! Without his local and species knowledge my trip would have been a lot less memorable, not least because I would have encountered about half as many birds!

Barry picked me up pre-dawn and we made our way to Cumberland State Forest via an Australian Brush-turkey merrily scratching around next to a tennis court! An awesome and truly bizarre species, notable as the first Megapode I’ve encountered anywhere in the world.

As the sun hit the trees in the Cumberland State Forest it was avian bedlam; Bell Miners and Eastern Whipbirds called all around and the bushes buzzed with Superb Fairy Wrens. Then it started - a deluge of parrots! In half an hour we encountered; Scaly-breasted Lorikeet, Little and Long-billed Corrella and Galah with the ever present Rainbow Lorikeet and Sulphur Crested Cockatoos. Add to this the very smart Black-faced Cuckoo Shrike and optic filling views of Pacific Baza and you can imagine I was overwhelmed!

We then moved further west to the Maraylya area where Barry had some top roadside habitats pinned down. These resulted in rash of new birds for my trip list including; Little Wattlebird, Rufous Whistler, Yellow and Striated Thornbill and Silvereye. To top it all off a Wedge-tailed Eagle, Australia’s largest bird of prey, soared over!

Like any good birder wildfowl were high on my ‘wish list’ and I was anxious to connect with some of Australia’s best, fortunately Barry had a super productive farm reservoir lined up. Black Swan, Australian Wood Duck, Pacific Black Duck, Grey and Chestnut Teal plus Hardheads all looked resplendent in the morning light. On the same pool was a species pair; Black-fronted and Red-kneed Dotterel.

I wont go through a bird-by-bird run through of the whole day but some further highlights were; Spotted Pardalote attending their bank-side nest hole, Satin Bowerbird strutting around its bower and the ground loving Red-rumped Parrot.

A huge bonus was seeing Eastern Grey Kangaroo and my first venomous snake of the trip, Red-bellied Black, which caused a commotion amongst some riverside fishermen.

We finished the day with the horizon full of smoke from severe bush fires, creating a dramatic backdrop to Bushell’s Lagoon which hosted; Brown Goshawk, Australasian Darter, Whistling Kite and Pied Stilt.

Tuesday 10th September 2013 goes down as a seismic day for me, a crash course in Aussie birds courtesy of Sir Barry Lancaster. Chatting with Barry was amazing, the circumstance of his arriving in Australia would make an epic read. Travelling overland from the UK hitchhiking and on public transport, before island hoping down the Pacific Rim to reach Australia.

His love of birds and enjoyment in showing others birds, means he has shown literally hundreds of visitors around Greater Sydney. The time spent with Barry rocketed my bird list for the visit and took me straight to the core of the best habitats available. I am eternally grateful for both his time and company.

Aside from my time with Barry I did one other concerted birding trip, with the Sydney Pelagic group aboard the legendary Helicat - which I blogged about > here <