Last week my husband and I were on holidays. Our brother and sister-in-law were getting married in Canberra at the end of the week, and what a great excuse for a road trip! Of course my hubby’s road trip was based around mountain biking, and mine around birding; but they’re surprisingly compatible and we had an amazing time exploring the coast from Melbourne to Tathra then inland NSW and ACT. Here are some of my bird adventures.
Sale Common Boardwalk under a threatening sky – great fun, apart from the sporadic drizzle
6th July 2015: I’ve been wanting to check out the wetland boardwalk at Sale for a few years, and finally we got there!
The second boardwalk proving my husband right, that the best might be ahead, when I was starting to wonder whether I could keep going
A mistake by me meant we went the super long way round, nearly 7 kilometres!!! I still can’t believe I made it, and my husband is extremely relieved that he didn’t end up carrying me! I’ve been working on my fitness lately but I would never have tackled that intentionally! It was very fortunate that the boardwalk adventure coinciding with a day when I was a bit manic, so I could manage it.
Pelicans flying in sync across a dramatic sky
Luckily it didn’t rain on us; the sky looked pretty threatening and the forecast wasn’t looking good. Fortunately there were just short light showers and drizzle then it would clear again.
The boardwalk is truly awesome, but a word of advice: walk along the first boardwalk then walk back to the start; same goes for the second boardwalk! Don’t try to do the loop; seriously chafed legs were the result for me.
But, success! A lifer in the gorgeous and seriously fast Silver eye! Yay!
Out of some fifteen odd photos this is the best one! Fast, agile, and always on the move!
This is one of the better focused shots, but always under a layer of foliage, making clear shots very tricky!
This was going to be the perfect shot…WAS!! This is the heart breaking side of bird photography; thinking you have an awesome shot and getting home to find that it’s awful! It’s okay small, but burns your eyes at full size!
We had incredible views of Black Shouldered and Whistling Kites, which was very exciting!
This kite is everywhere, but it can be hard to get a shot since they have super spidey sense to go with their robber mask
Always looking around suspiciously, and their head can rotate to 180 degrees so they see you coming for miles
Whistling Kite sitting on a rock taking in the surroundings after a meal of something gorey!
Gorgeous huge Whistling Kite whistling to its mate, the one above, about something or other
One of my favourites for the day was a stunning Great Egret. Due to the bright white colour against a gloomy day we could see the egret from both sides of the wetland!!
Poorly composed photo and all, but such a lovely graceful creature…and aware of our every move!
Some of the highlights were: feeding Sulfur Crested Cockatoos,
Chewing with his mouth open, tut tut!
a White Throated Treecreeper,
Not a great photo, but a fascinating few species of bird that run vertically up the tree feeding on insects on the bark
plenty of Grey Shrike-Thrush, one with a caterpillar
A nice juicy caterpillar for lunch
Lovely birds with a delightful singing voice, and one lucky bird with lunch!
Fairy Wrens dancing on the algae/moss covering of the river without falling through, so light and agile! This is an Eclipse Male, meaning a juvenile fairy wren morphing into a male with full blue plumage…you can see it starting to come out,
One of several Superb Fairy Wrens bouncing around on the surface of the river
a Pelican filter feeding in the river, dragging along the edge of the bank then using its enormous beak to filter the contents
I’ve only seen Pelicans at the seaside where they catch and scull fish…this behaviour is new to me
Tipping up its beak to filter the good stuff, then let the bad stuff go
and an Australian Darter drying out after a swim.
As you can see from the river, it had started to drizzle again…not sure how dry his wings are going to get!
I’d highly recommend the boardwalks; you’ll have a ball!
Next stop just past Swan Reach at Colquhoun Mountain Bike Park. Hubby set off in the rain and chill conditions because, you know, it’s a bike path! I had planned to bird watch around the path but actually it was pretty wet and cold so I changed my mind to sit in the car. I thought I’d watch a DVD to pass the hour but I turned on my laptop and remembered it had 7% battery from when I last had it on before leaving home. Annoying but oh well, I’ll borrow hubby’s…oh great, it has 10%! So radio it is!
Next stop, Lakes Entrance.
L i f e - be IN it! 
I know there is a setting within your blog settings where you can request to approve the first comment from every person, so maybe you have that turned on? I am sure I have commented before though?
I just found a comment from a friend on one of my posts that had been marked as spam. I could see no reason why it should have been!
I’ve got it set to approve all, which is fine, but if the notification gets deleted before I see it, I won’t know that you’ve commented. Right now, it shows as a notification at the top of my phone, I select that and get a glimpse of it before it says notification failed and vanishes. Based on that glimpse I go to comments cos I know you’ve commented, but without that I wouldn’t know. But it’s more than happened before so that’s good!
Great photos, Danika. I love the flying pelicans shot. I wasn’t aware there’s a boardwalk at Sale. Will have to check it out next time I’m down that way! 🙂
Thanks Anne, and its definitely worth a lot 🙂 and YAY, I got your comment 🙂 they notification vanished but it was still in the comments section
Yay! Apparently my comments were being marked as spam! Good to know it’s fixed now. 🙂
But there’s still something dodgy about them being a notification, it appears then gets deleted…