Bees

Had a few native bees on the feeble collection of weeds that grow on the balcony. Better than caterpillars at least.

Marley track

I did the Marley track twice last month once with Allan and once with Adelle, but it is a nice little walk so well worth the repeat. Deer pool would also be worth a visit in the warmer months.

Spotted Pardalote (Pardalotus punctatus)


White's Skink (Egernia whitii)

Shanes park bogan retreat

Iain keeps dragging me out to Shane's park so often that I am getting the impression he like the place. Sadly we didn't do very well there as far as birds are concerned but that may have been due to the large number of people riding around on motorbikes.

Magnificently feral

Perrys lookdown

Perrys lookdown is well renowned as a good place to stretch the legs so a fews weeks back in some reasonably mild weather Allan and I went went for a wander up and down it.
Didn't see much in the way of wildlife but there were plenty of other punters out for a brisk stroll.

Hamilton Island

Adelle and I went to Ojia's and Adam's wedding a few weeks ago on Hamilton island. The island is quite developed but there was still some wildlife left in places and we managed to see a green turtle, a monitor, a green tree snake a few birds, some live coral and a heck of a lot of dead coral. There were also golf buggies to drive around the island but unfortunately ours malfunctioned so we spent most of the time walking.

Orange-footed scrubfowl are timid little buggers.


A considerably friendlier Helmeted Friarbird (Philemon buceroides)


Green tree Snake (Dendrelaphis punctulata)

Mt Banks

Adelle, Bill, Allan and I went for a lovely walk in the blue mountains a few weeks back. After considerable deliberation on the way up we decided to go to Mt Banks which turned out to be one of the best walks that I have done in the blue mountains.

The view from the top of the mountain is not that spectacular but it is possible to walk round to the cliffs overlooking the grosse valley and get some good views back towards Blackheath and down the grosse valley.




Chestnit-rumped heathwren

Barren Grounds

Went to barren grounds nature reserve for what wil probably be the last time as Allan finally managed to see the ground parrot. Sadly I didn't get any good photos of the parrot but did get a reasonable one of the beautiful firetail.

Whale watching

Twice a year the whales migrate past Sydney and put on quite a good display. We decided to go to kurnell and have a look. There were a few hundred other punters there but the vast majority stayed within 50 m of their cars so the cliffs were pretty quiet which meant we could do a bit of bird watching as well. In the end we saw 2 or 3 humpback whales and more importantly a magnificent male southern emu wren.


Humpback whale

Barrington Tops National Park

Over the long weekend last month, Allan, Gemma, Adelle and I headed up to Barrington Tops National Park. Despite the cold the Polblue camp ground was reasonably crowded with large 4WD vehicles and there unique occupants.


It was also rather cold for most of the days we were there and when it was it was not cold it was raining so it reminded me of home which was nice.

Just to prove it does snow in Australia.

Wildlife was pretty sparse and you probably could have counted all the animals we saw in the national part on your fingers. On the drive out we saw quite a bit more with lots of kangaroos in the fields. We were lucky enough to see some horses in the park.


Not bad for a feral animal.

Wentworth falls - National Pass

A few weeks back my parents visited so I decided to do a walk which Allan had be talking about for a while. The weather had been rather wet for the preceding week or so which meant for the first time since I arrived in Australia that when I went to see a waterfall there was actually water falling rather just a couple of stagnant pools. Just to prove the point for the doubtful septics here is some photographic evidence.

There were also some nice steps for the punters to enjoy.

A few birds were seen along the way as well including this extremely friendly rockwarbler, which despite it practically landing on my foot I still struggled to get a photo of.