The Cuckoos have arrived

On Sunday 25th September I was sailing from Rathmines to Belmont, and heard the unmistakable, raucous shrieks of two Channel-billed cuckoos - my first observations of this enormous, migratory cuckoo for Spring 2016.  

Channel-Billed Cuckoos heard calling at Rathmines & Skye Point, Sunday 25th September 2016   

One bird was calling near the Catalina flying boat memorial, which is a propellor mounted on a pillar in a lonely area of park.  The other was calling from a mature stand of tall Eucalypts & Angophoras near the far south-western end of Skye Point.  

 

Yesterday (Wednesday 28th September 2016), I heard the equally distinctive calls of an Eastern Koel, calling a patch of remnant bush in suburban Maitland during my lunch break, 13:30 - 14:00.       

These are both common, secure species, but these are interesting records as they are both migratory species.  These were the first sightings of both species of cuckoos I have had for Spring 2016.  I have recorded both sightings with the Atlas of Living Australia.  

The seasons are definitely changing at the moment.  The days are getting noticeably warmer and it is lighter much earlier in the morning now - in fact, Daylight savings time starts this weekend.        

A Dream Realised - Port Stephens trip 2nd July 2016

Two juvenile White-bellied Sea-eagles ride the updraft from Little Island,
just offshore from Port Stephens, NSW.

I have always wanted to visit Broughton Island, just four nautical miles north of Port Stephens, NSW.  For some reason, I had never made the trip.  It is a fair bit of effort to get there, as the coastline is very rugged and there are numerous bomboras lurking barely submerged to catch the unwary.  There are minimal facilities on the island and no easy way to get there - which is just the way I like it.

Broughton Island is a locally-famous destination for mutton-birds, Green and golden bell frogs, fishing & scuba diving, and has some very strange mysteries associated with it.  Legends of Russian spies and whispers of submarines abound.  There is a miniature version of a "Tin-city" on the Island as well, and the locals are rightfully defensive and pretty secretive about the place.  The populations of king fish, snapper, teraglin, jewfish, blue groper, sea-urchins, lobsters, great white sharks and (in season) long-tailed tuna & juvenile marlin are very healthy indeed.  There are also several gutters nearby which are famous for "endangered" grey-nurse sharks.

I headed to Broughton for the first time on Saturday, 2nd July.  It was an extremely interesting experience, part of the "Canon Collective" promotional weekend.  I had the great fortune to spend the entire day with Darren Jew, who is one of Australia's greatest underwater photographers (and a thorough gentleman).  There were two other Canon Ambassadors (both very talented Pro photographers) and only three other enthusiast photographers.  What an opportunity !  It was one-on-one tuition with the very latest Canon Pro-DSLR bodies and lenses for the day. Serendipity !
     

We were originally booked for an underwater adventure, snorkelling at Broughton, but unfortunately it was called off due to weather.  All of my family and friends thought I was utterly nuts, as it is almost the middle of winter, and we've been enjoying quite a few frosts lately.  My family also reminded me several times of the sheer numbers of great whites in the area.  Thanks for the unwanted images in my brain in the wee-small hours of the night before the trip guys!

We eventually departed just before noon and fortunately conditions had abated considerably.  There was still about two metres of swell, with the very occasional three metre wave rolling through.  We headed out to do a spot of whale watching instead and had a fantastic experience.  We had very close encounters with numerous pods of humpback whales, Australian fur-seals, common dolphins and various sea birds including petrels, gannets, terns, silver gulls, black-browed albatross and a close encounter with one of my favourite birds - White bellied sea-eagles.         

Juvenile white-bellied Sea-eagle, Little Island, Port Stephens

Little Island is well-named.  It is a tiny pinnacle of rock, emerging straight out of thirty metres of water and exposed to the full force of the ocean.  We watched two juvenile Sea-eagles playing in the updraft for about 5 minutes, before they decided to give us a close inspection.  The air was filled with the sounds of motor-drives hitting over-drive as the Sea-eagles passed slowly overhead.  The 400mm zoom lenses combined with 50 Megapixel sensors gave absolutely spectacular results.  I was thrilled to bits.  Even the pros were smiling !      

Suddenly an adult female appeared from nowhere, and seemed to shepherd the juveniles away from the boat, and back towards Little Island.  We resumed our journey north, bound for Broughton.  It only lasted five minutes or so, but it was a pretty special encounter.     
     

Adult female, White-bellied Sea-eagle, Little Island Port Stephens.  

To be Continued 

Moonbi panthers and the saddest damn thing . . .

There's a reason it's been a while since I've blogged.  We've had a bit of a no-win situation arise, and been considering whether or not I should share this story or just move on with something light.  It's fermented away for two months now and it's time to let it out.  

Over our Christmas holidays, the wife and I headed to the New England region chasing fields of sunflowers to photograph.  Amanda has a real passion for them, and it was only thing we managed to miss during our honeymoon in Italy.  We were hoping to see the legendary hills of the Tuscany region over-flowing with the floral gold of "Girasole".  But the fields had all been literally just harvested; we had missed it by a few days.  

Over the Christmas holidays, Amanda had tracked down where the sunflower fields were in the New England, and even had sourced location info from some of the photo groups she follows.  The latest images were taken only two days before we left.  We arrived mid-morning Saturday to find every last sunflower field was now just flattened stalks.  We had missed it - again.  Amanda was shattered.   

We wandered around Tamworth and the New England for the next few days, and had a bit of fun and sight-seeing.  On our way home, we stopped off at Moonbi lookout for a bushwalk amongst the rounded granite tors and we enjoyed the splendid views.  We were sitting down to have lunch when three gorgeous little kittens, each as black as coal emerged from the bush around the car park.  They were very hungry and very thirsty and shyly appeared from the root buttress of a huge old fig tree.  Gently we scooped them up, one by one, and popped them in the back of my ute and gave them a drink of water.  I expected they would go berserk, but instead they gratefully curled up together in a cluster of purring little bodies and promptly went to sleep in a ball.  

Naturally we christened them "the Moonbi panthers", after the legendary black panthers that - according to local legend - haunt the more remote parts of the Moonbi area.  The Moonbi panthers have been known to kill and partially consume the occasional sheep and are well-known for choosing to terrify passing humans who don't seem to have cameras on them.  

So here we were, in the middle of the Christmas holidays, with three kittens that were very obviously the remains of a litter that been dumped in the bush.  We were up for a challenge, and rang every animal shelter we could find on the web between Tamworth and Newcastle.  All of them were closed for the week of the Christmas holidays.  Hmmm, that wasn't a part of the original plan.  These were very clearly domestic cats and utterly delightful.  They'd make someone very happy once they were checked out & vaccinated.  So they lived with us for a few days until the shelter in Newcastle re-opened.  

The day arrived to drop the kittens off at the shelter.  As much as we feared they'd miss out on finding a home and in all likelihood, be destroyed, there was no other option.  We'd asked our friends, put ads up on social media, but no-one came forward.  We are dog people, and LOVE our wildlife.  They simply couldn't live with us.  So the sad decision was acted upon.  They were just so skinny and dehydrated when we found them, who knows if they would have survived - and it wouldn't be pleasant if they didn't.  I am an Ecologist and know full-well if they had survived, they would certainly have wreaked havoc on the local population of native fauna.

The drop-off point was the thing that hit me from left field.  It was professional, humane - and very efficient.  We popped all three kittens in the one cat carrier (which had water & food provided) and gently locked the door behind them.  We had left a note explaining the origin of the kittens on top of the carrier.  In the extremely unlikely event they were microchipped, the owner would know how they had managed to travel so far.  A sign explained a ranger dropped by every few hours to remove any surrendered animals.  

We could hear and see the other animals that people had surrendered.  It was heart-breakingly sad.  One old gentleman of a "suburban terrier" whined forlornly and we could just glimpse him.  We told him he was a good boy, and the sound of his tail hitting the cage came back to us.  As we walked away, I looked down at the top-dressed lawn and there were his paw-prints next to his masters' shoe prints.  I couldn't help but wonder about his story and how it had come to this, discarded at the very end of his life.  I couldn't help but think of our own dogs when a gust of wind blew a mote of dust off the renovated lawn.  It landed right in my eye.  
         

Beautiful birds of the back yard

Gorgeous male King parrot in the back yard, Casa da Ayre January 2016 

We provide sunflower seeds to the wild birds in our backyard - which seems to be greatly appreciated by the native bird population.  On any given day, our gardens are a riot of colour and noise from the visiting Rainbow lorrikeets, Scaley-breasted lorikeets, Eastern rosellas, Crested pigeons, Little corellas, Galahs and occasionally Sulphur-crested cockatoos.

Because the birds are such messy feeders, invariably we end up with blooms of sunflowers near the feeders, and when those sunflowers start to seed, the local King parrot population arrives to feed on the flowerheads.      

White-plumed honeyeater

White-plumed honeyeater, Maitland area, NSW 

I finally managed to catch a White-plumed honeyeater sitting out in the open for long enough to get a shot!  This fellow was being harrassed by a Willy-wagtail, and was distracted long enough for me to grab this image.  The simple sound of my camera's shutter was enough to make him depart immediately !

Osprey sighting - The Esplanade, Speers Point

Adult Osprey perched on a streetlight, The Esplanade, Speers Point 

It was a very unseasonably warm day, reaching 39 degrees in Maitland.  There was not a cloud in the sky, and it was intense.  I was driving home from work late this afternoon, mind wandering pleasantly, air-con at full-blast in the ute, heading south along the shores of beautiful Lake Macquarie.

With a start, my reverie was interrupted.  I jarred upright in the seat and rapidly pulled over, out of the angry home-bound traffic.  I had noticed one of our more interesting birds of prey - an Osprey - perched on a street lamp above The Esplanade, Speers Point, one of the busier areas of the Lake.  

The Osprey didn't care about the hundreds of cars roaring past only 20 metres below.  As happens so often with raptors, complete indifference changed into alert wariness as soon as I walked within 50 metres of the light pole.  The bird would have watched me with near total indifference if I'd been able to stay in the car, but there was no way I could pull over near the bird and reversing back to it was completely out of the question.   

Moments after the first image was taken, the bird took off, flying south east, hugging the water's edge around the next headland, disappearing towards Warners Bay.  I had hoped to walk past the osprey, and take a few images with the sun behind me.  But sometimes you just have to make do with what you can get.  This was one of those moments.  

     

Osprey heading towards Warners Bay, late in the afternoon 19/11/2015.  

Backyard Birds

Rainbow lorrikeet, Casa Da Ayre, Lake Macquarie, NSW.

One of the beautiful things about living in Lake Macquarie is the abundance of wildlife.  We regularly have 30 or more Rainbow lorrikeets & Scaley-breasted lorrikeets visit our gardens.  Both of these species are exceedingly common in peri-urban areas on the east coast.  I grabbed this shot yesterday afternoon while working in the backyard.